The Washington Research Foundation (WRF), a not-for-profit organisation that helps research institutions in the US state commercialise their inventions through intellectual property management and start-up investment activities, has filed a lawsuit alleging violation of IPR relating to Bluetooth. The suit claims that Matsuhita/Panasonic, Nokia and Samsung are infringing four Bluetooth patents awarded to a Washington University student Edwin Suominen – the earliest commencing in 1996. Suominen then turned the patents over to the university which in turn assigned them to the WRF’s licensing programme.

The patents in question been licensed by Broadcom of the USA, but apparently not by CSR of the UK, a company that supplies Bluetooth chips to the cell phone vendors named in the action. The plaintiffs are calling for damages and a ban on the import of Bluetooth-enabled phones from the named vendors into the USA where the patents are enforceable. The action is apparently aimed at the cell phone vendors rather than the UK semiconductor supplier for the reason that the latter may not know which imported cell phones contain the chips that are the subject of the litigation.

According to the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) citing ABI Research data, the installed base of Bluetooth devices reached 1bn in early November 2006, and weekly shipments of the wireless devices were then running at the rate of 12mn per week.

“To put this number in perspective, one billion is greater than the number of PC users in the world and equal to the number of mobile phones shipped this year,” commented Michael Foley, Ph.D., executive director, Bluetooth SIG. “Reaching the one billion milestone is a huge win for the Bluetooth industry and we want to congratulate and thank our 6,000 member companies whose innovation and products got us here. These are the same companies, along with new members, that will drive us towards our next goal of shipping two billion devices in one year in 2010.”
John Williamson