Broadcom Could Benefit From Bluetooth Case

Written by Adam Gosling

Thursday, 04 January 2007

Communications silicon specialist Broadcom could be the major beneficiary of legal action taken by a U.S. University. The Washington Research Foundation (WRF) has filed suit against three leading cell phone makers in the United States alleging that the Bluetooth technology used in their mobile phones breaches patents owned by the University of Washington. (CORRECTED: this story originally named Washington State University as a party to this legal action) WRF is a research commercialisation and patent watchdog for the University. The complaint centres around research carried out in the mid 1990's by Edwin Suominen, a student at the University. Suominen is being retained by WRF as a technical consultant and is party to the suit. Though the University was granted a US patent over the technology it is understood that Broadcom is the only chip manufacturer to licence the technology from the University of Washington. The three mobile phone companies targeted in the suit are Matsushita (Panasonic) Nokia and Samsung. These three companies buy their Bluetooth chips from CSR a British-based technology firm. Based in Cambridge, CSR is not named in the court filing and WRF has reportedly said it has attempted to negotiate a licensing deal with the company without success. WRF has suggested the mobile phone companies targeted could avoid prosecution if they changed suppliers to Broadcom which licences the technology used in the Bluetooth chipset. CSR has told Reuters it has consulted with its legal team and decided to "defend its products vigorously". How it intends to do this is not clear as the lawsuit names CSR's customers rather than CSR as the supplier of the alleged infringing product. CSR (Cambridge Silicon Radio) is a fabless semiconductor manufacturer specialising in single-chip wireless solutions for Bluetooth and 802.11 applications. The US Patent does not impact CSR in all markets, so the WRF has gone after the handset manufacturers bringing product into the United States. Related news items Armani, Prada, Labels Get Mobile -26/09/2007 Nokia E51: Smarter Than It Looks -19/09/2007 Broadcom Enthusisam for 802.11n Wavers -06/09/2007 Phone, iPod Link With New Music Pack -03/09/2007 ASUS A686/696 GPS PDA -23/08/2007 Newer news items Telstra 3G Gets Express Card -24/04/2007 Asia Mobile Market Growing at 24%: Frost -02/04/2007 Vodafone Subsidises Data Hardware -31/03/2007 Ericsson Promises 1Mbps GSM Upgrade -14/03/2007 No 3G For Santa Rosa -18/02/2007 Older news items Intel Demo's Mobile WiMAX Chip -07/12/2006 Spin Internet Expands Free Mobile Broadband -07/12/2006 ACMA Hunts For Useful Spectrum -05/12/2006 Municipal Wi-Fi Planned For Sydney -29/11/2006 Wireless Broadband Extended On Darling Downs -26/11/2006 Tag This Now: