On Monday, American Patents LLC sued Sierra Wireless Inc. in the Western District of Texas for infringing four of its patents. The accused products include various Sierra Wireless laptops and routers.
The filing explained that American Patents is a Texas company, while Sierra Wireless Inc. is Canadian, with headquarters in British Columbia. Allegedly, the four patents-in-suit generally pertain to communications networks and other technology used in smart devices such as phones, televisions and appliances.
Personnel at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Nokia Corporation reportedly developed the patented technology, which American Patents purports to own outright. The plaintiff explained that a professor and a graduate student at Georgia Tech developed what it refers to as the three “Mody patents.”
These reportedly relate to Multi-Input, Multi-Output (MIMO) technology. When invented, they were at the MIMO frontier, “developing, disclosing, and patenting a solution for achieving both time and frequency synchronization in MIMO systems,” the filing claimed. The Mody patents have reportedly been cited during patent prosecution hundreds of times by leading computing and network communications companies.
The Nokia patent, the complaint explained, is related to reduction of interference in receivers with multiple antennas. The four-count complaint argued that Sierra has infringed the four patents because its products practice methods recited therein, like “synchronizing a Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system in time and frequency domains.”
The plaintiff is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief, damages, and its attorneys’ fees and costs. Notably, American Patents sued Xerox Corporation the same day over infringement of the same patents in a 114-page Western District of Texas complaint.
The plaintiff is represented by Antonelli, Harrington & Thompson LLP and The Stafford Davis Firm.
