Research In Motion Limited (USA) (NASDAQ:RIMM) (TSE:RIM), Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) and 13 other companies are being sued on a basic patent involving the handover of wireless signals. Court documents indicate that Steelhead Licensing filed the lawsuits Friday in Delaware’s U.S. District Court. The patent in question is for a process that’s used to determine how handover occurs within a mobile radio network.
In addition to Research In Motion Limited (NASDAQ:RIMM) (TSE:RIM) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), the suits also named Motorola Mobility, a subsidiary of Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE), NEC Casio Mobile, ZTE Corp. (HK:763), Pantech Group Holdings BHD (KL:PGHB), Kyocera Corporation (NYSE:KYO), LG Electronics (KS:066570) and HTC (TT:2498), as well as Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ), Sprint Nextel Corporation (NYSE:S), AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), MetroPCS Communications Inc (NYSE:PCS) and T-Mobile USA, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom AG (XETRA:DTE).
The court filings say that Research In Motion Limited (NASDAQ:RIMM) (TSE:RIM))’s BlackBerry Curve, the iPhone, HTC’s Windows Phone 8X and the Droid X and Razr models all infringe on the patent allegedly owned by Steelhead Licensing. Other devices that Steelhead claims infringe on its patent include Verizon’s JetPack 4G Hotspot and similar devices from other companies on the list.
Currently the patent that’s involved in the lawsuit is listed by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office as being owned by BT, a network operator in the U.K. However the fillings indicate that BT sold its patents to Steelhead last year.
The company has demanded that a jury be involved in all of these lawsuits and requested damages that will cover past infringement as well as current and future infringement.
