KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa.-InterDigital Technology Corp. will keep its patent on the Time Division Multiple Access wireless radio communications system used in Germany, said the company, after an appeal before the German Supreme Court challenging its validity was withdrawn by the appellants.
As a result, the November 1996 German Federal Patent Court decided to maintain the validity of the patent, which originally was granted by the Patent Office in 1990. Since then, the validity of the German TDMA system patent was challenged by Siemens AG (which withdrew before the Federal Patent Court decision), Alcatel SEL AG and Philips Patentverwaltung Gmbh.
Alcatel and Philips had appealed the 1996 decision, but withdrew the appeal, claiming that the patent is no longer “applicable to their current products.”
