Yet Another Company Claims Patents Over WiFi, Begins Suing

from the patent-thicket dept

Fri, Mar 18th 2011 3:55pm — Mike Masnick

The patent thicket around basic WiFi technology continues to grow. Over the years, we've pointed to a wide variety of companies that were claiming to hold patents that were infringed by every implementation of WiFi. In other words, WiFi's got a huge patent thicket issue to deal with. The latest is that Canadian patent hoarder Mosaid Technologies has claimed that its patents are violated, and has sued bunch of companies, including Dell, RIM and AsusTek. Kinda funny that it seems like every one of the companies suing over WiFi patents doesn't actually make anything themselves...

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Filed Under: patents, wifi
Companies: asustek, dell, mosaid, rim

11 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2011 @ 4:38pm

IBM holds several patents that describe the internet at large. If RJR shows up he'd say something nonsensical about how these patents don't mater, then he'd start playing the star spangled banner while naming Edison, the Write bros., Dean Kamen... yada yada.. people that have nothing to do with the real problems facing our crumbling patent system.
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2011 @ 5:02pm

I wonder how that would effect patents and manufacturing, if only those that made items with the patent owned were eligible for patent relief? At the least it would slow the patent lawsuit with the shopping of venues to bring the case to court. At this point I can not help but think such a requirement would be a good thing.

Heaven help us if this sort of common sense was spread to copyrights.
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xenomancer (profile), 18 Mar 2011 @ 5:18pm

Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
Can someone at the USPTO start sending out denials with "IT'S BEEN INVENTED ALREADY, STOP DOING IT WRONG!!!" as the reasoning?
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Anonymous Coward, 18 Mar 2011 @ 6:17pm

Re: Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
They get paid more for every patent approved, like a commission system.
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Shon Gale (profile), 19 Mar 2011 @ 6:23am

Get a Patent! Get a Copyright! Buy your License to Litigate!
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Anonymous Coward, 19 Mar 2011 @ 11:57am

Nice to see that "IP company = automatically patent hoarder". Citation needed, Mike.
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Christopher (profile), 19 Mar 2011 @ 1:10pm

Re: Re: Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
WHAT? If anything, it should be the opposite or that they don't get paid anything if a patent is found to have not supposed to be issued or at all.
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Shadojak (profile), 19 Mar 2011 @ 6:44pm

"The latest is that Canadian patent hoarder Mosaid Technologies has claimed that its patents are violated, and has sued bunch of companies, including Dell, RIM and AsusTek."

READ, maybe, AC #6?

He didn't say "IP company", he said it's NAME.
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Pixelation, 19 Mar 2011 @ 11:11pm

It seems that a company would be less likely to be sued out of existence if they didn't have a product. Just sue anyone who creates a product that is at all related to your patent.

I think it's time I get a law degree and create a broad patent. I'll be rich in a few years.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Mar 2011 @ 9:15am

Re:
What's the difference?
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Mike Masnick (profile), 21 Mar 2011 @ 12:20am

Re:
Nice to see that "IP company = automatically patent hoarder". Citation needed, Mike.

If you're familiar with what these companies do, patent hoarder is an accurate description.
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