14 DAY TRIAL // The past few days have mostly been dominated by news coming from the IFA trade show, but there seem to be other things going on, not all of them pleasant, as made clear by WiLAN, or at least its lawyers.
Lawsuits are, ironically, a fairly common occurrence in the IT industry, especially because of the nature of the patent system.
Often, a company or another will sue a rival, or multiple corporations, over infringement of one or more such patents.
Apple's suit against Samsung over the latter's tablets and other mobile devices is one of the most recent such developments.
In fact, since we touched on the subject, our colleagues over at IFA, in Berlin, Germany, found that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 had disappeared, what with Apple winning a victory in court.
Now, a different legal action has been taken, and Apple finds itself as the accused for once, albeit not on its own.
Indeed, the targets of the lawsuit are quite numerous, including HTC, HP, Apple, Kyocera, Alcatel-Lucent, Sierra Wireless and Novatel.
The one who started it all is WiLAN, who claims that the ones listed above infringe two if its patents, both of them dealing with data transmission.
One of them is parent no. 5,282,222, which is related to data transmission technology with LTE (Long Term Evolution) and WiFi.
The other one is the no. RE37,802, dealing with data transmissions of the CDMA and HSPA varieties.
As with all lawsuits over alleged patent infringement, this one may be resolved quickly with a royalty payment by the accused, or they may decide to just fight it out for as long as it takes. Time will tell which of the outcomes is achieved.
Those who want to take a direct look at WiLAN's announcement can drop by this particular press release.