InterDigital Flaunts Its Wireless Patents in Delaware and ITC Infringement Suits Against Nokia, Huawei, and ZTE
Nate Raymond ContactAll Articles
The American Lawyer
July 28, 2011
© Rido - Fotolia.com
© Rido - Fotolia.com
Did wireless provider Interdigital Inc. hire Latham & Watkins and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosat to file infringement claims this week at least partly as a marketing tool sell its patent portfolio—or the whole company—to Google Inc. or an IP-starved rival?
That's the question we're asking ourselves this week, after InterDigital accused Huawei Technologies, Nokia Corporation and ZTE Corporation of infringing its patents in separate suits filed Tuesday in Delaware federal district court and the U.S. International Trade Commission. The company lodged its claims just one week after announcing that it was exploring "potential strategic alternatives," including a sale, in light of the intellectual property boom.
InterDigital boasted in its press release announcing Tuesday's infringement suits that it owns about 1,400 U.S. patents and 8,000 non-U.S. patents, with thousands more applications pending. Most of those patents, including the ones it's asserting against Huawei, Nokia, and ZTE, relate to "digital wireless radiotelephony technology," the company claims.
In the wake of the heated $4.5 billion auction of Nortel Network's patent portfolio, it's hardly a secret that the tech world is mired in an arms race to acquire litigation-ready patents. Earlier this month HTC paid $300 million to acquire the chip-designer S3 Graphics less than a week after S3 won an ITC ruling that Apple had infringed two of its patents for compression technology. Eastman Kodak, meanwhile, announced last week that it was exploring a sale of part of its portfolio of digital imagining and storage patents.
Whatever the merits of InterDigital's infringement claims, the ITC and Delaware suits give the company a nice opportunity to flaunt its IP assets. "I believe they want to demonstrate the breadth of their standards-related patents in connection with 3G just as they put the company on the selling block," said Florian Mueller, our go-to smartphone wars commentator, IP activist, and blogger at FOSS Patents. Google has reportedly had preliminary discussions already about buying InterDigital.
A spokesman for InterDigital said said the company would not comment "on any speculation, nor can we elaborate on the on strategic alternatives process beyond what was stated in the PR."
The InterDigital suits appear to be reuniting Wilson Sonsini with part of a six-partner group that defected in March for Latham. The Latham partners involved in the litigation, Ron Shulman and Michael Ladra, had been at Wilson Sonsini up until that move. Shulman declined to comment, and Wilson Sonsini partner David Steuer didn't respond to a request for comment. None of the defendants responded to our requests for comment.
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