InterDigital Technology Corp. made another move in a long-running patent dispute with Ericsson Radio Systems AB.
The company’s parent, InterDigital Communications Corp., announced ITC has sought a further stay of its patent litigation with Ericsson in federal court, requesting a re-examination by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office of several ITC patents involved with the case.
“The re-examination process is often used by patent holders to confirm the validity of patents in light of prior art (preceding knowledge which explains the state-of-the-art at the time of the invention),” said Howard Goldberg, executive vice president of ITC. “We have asked the patent office to re-examine several of our patents and in doing so they could further strengthen the validity of those patents. We believe the potential benefits of a re-examination are significant.”
ITC has asked the court to stay all further proceedings until the patent office finishes its re-examination of those patents. The trial had been postponed because of a similar patent dispute between InterDigital and Motorola Inc., said Susan Sutton, ITC spokeswoman. The U.S. Court of Appeals in August overturned an earlier finding that two of ITC’s patents involving Time Division Multiple Access technology were invalid, but it denied ITC’s request for a new trial.
ITC initially filed suit against Ericsson in 1993, claiming the manufacturer infringed on certain TDMA patents. Ericsson sought a court order to stop ITC from making any further accusations against Ericsson.
In this latest round, two new TDMA patents ITC received in August and November from the patent office have been included in the suit.
Ericsson has sought a ruling that the two patents are invalid and not infringed by its Global System for Mobile communications or Interim Standard 54 products manufactured, sold or used in the United States.
“The new requests from InterDigital and Ericsson are additional steps in a long-running patent dispute which we hope can be resolved by our companies in a manner which benefits both of us,” said William Doyle, president of InterDigital.
