Skyroam attacks uCloudlink over trade secret theft
Mobile data company Skyroam has accused rival uCloudlink of stealing its trade secrets and infringing its patents, just one month after uCloudlink redesigned its products to overcome an injunction.
Skyroam, and its parent company SIMO, claimed that uCloudlink’s newly-redesigned products infringe Skyroam’s patent related to virtual SIM technology, in a suit filed yesterday, January 8 at the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.
Virtual SIMs use cloud technology, allowing users to travel internationally and use mobile data without having to pay expensive roaming fees or purchase a country-specific SIM card.
“Skyroam recently learned that uCloudlink spent the past several years improperly using Skyroam’s proprietary technology to develop its own virtual SIM (or Cloud SIM) based hotspot products, sold under the GlocalMe, RoamingMan, and Sapphire brand names,” said a press release from the company.
This is the second case Skyroam has brought against its Hong Kong-based competitor to stop alleged infringement.
In its initial patent infringement suit, Skyroam was awarded $8 million in damages, after a jury in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York found that two uCloudlink entities willfully infringed Skyroam’s US patent 9,736,689, called “System and method for mobile telephone roaming”.
Post-trial, the court entered a permanent injunction against uCloudlink. However, in December last year, uCloudlink reentered the US market after redesigning its devices and obtaining an order from the court that the new products don’t infringe the patent.
This week, Skyroam claimed that the redesigned devices are “considered functionally inferior” and still infringe the ‘689 patent.
“Skyroam has therefore been forced to bring a second lawsuit against uCloudlink for patent infringement ... In this second lawsuit, Skyroam contends devices sold by uCloudlink after its redesign (including its newly released G4 WiFi hotspot and P3 mobile phone) infringe the ‘689 patent,” said Skyroam.
The latest lawsuit accused uCloudlink of infringing the ‘689 patent with its latest products, in addition to misappropriating trade secrets.
Skyroam claimed that, through discovery in the New York patent case, it learned that uCloudlink wrongly possesses confidential Skyroam documents, with some of these documents stolen by Skyroam’s former chief architect, who brought them to uCloudlink.
Some of the documents produced by uCloudlink allegedly contained key technical information for Skyroam’s first mobile hotspot device and backend systems.
The press release concluded: “Based on the documents uncovered so far, Skyroam believes uCloudlink used its improperly obtained knowledge to develop uCloudlink’s Cloud SIM business model and related IP to try to catch up in the mobile connectivity market.”
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