The WRF was smart to let the major industry players (cellphone manuf) incorporate Bluetooth before throwing their weight around and stifling the adoption.
From ZD Net U.S. Group sues over Bluetooth IP
An intellectual-property management group has sued mobile phone makers Nokia, Samsung Electronics and Matsushita-owned Panasonic for infringing on a patent for wireless Bluetooth technology.
"Defendants have manufactured, used, imported into the United States, sold and offered for sale devices which, or the use of which, infringes at least the '963' patent," Washington Research Foundation said in a complaint filed at the U.S. Western District Court of Washington at Seattle. WRF helps manage investment in and licensing of technology developed by researchers in the state of Washington.
The WRF complaint targeted products containing Bluetooth chips from British chipmaker CSR, which is the world market leader for chips that wirelessly connect electronic gadgets such as cell phones, headsets and laptops.
CSR, which was not immediately available to comment, was not sued by the research group. And CSR rival Broadcom, based in the U.S., has acquired a license to use the radio frequency receiver technology, which was patented in 1999, WRF said.
Engineer Jaap Haartsen, at Swedish mobile phone maker Ericsson, has been credited with the invention of Bluetooth during his research work in the second half of the 1990s.
Ericsson donated the technology, royalty-free, to create a large market for its applications. Since then, hundreds of millions of mobile phones, headsets and laptops have been equipped with Bluetooth chips every year
No comments:
Post a Comment