Nokia, Matsushita, Samsung Bitten By Bluetooth-Related Lawsuit
Friendly advice: Don’t go Googling the words “Bluetooth lawsuit” unless you’re prepared to sort through a zillion entries.
This is not the suit by Verizon Wireless customers complaining about their Bluetooth functionality being crippled. Or the suit claiming that Bluetooth headsets are dangerously loud. It is also not an identity theft suit filed by the Viking warrior Harald Bluetooth, for whom the technology was named.
In this case, a foundation set up to defend patents on work done by universities is suing Nokia, Samsung and Matsushita (Panasonic) for infringing patents related to Bluetooth technology developed by the University of Washington. The foundation has apparently been negotiating with these firms for years to reach a settlement, without success.
Bluetooth was first developed by scientists at Ericsson in Sweden in 1994. But it seems an undergrad named Edwin Suominen refined Bluetooth technology while studying at the university, and the control of the patents related to his work reverted to this foundation.
(I’d like to say that I was doing something important when I was an undergrad, such as refining Bluetooth technology. I’d like to, but I can’t.)
No comment yet from the companies named in the suit. CSR, the manufacturer which makes chips which are involved in the suit, isn’t named as a defendant - but says that the suit is “without merit”.
At this point I wouldn’t worry about your Bluetooth capabilities being turned off suddenly. But users of BlackBerrys are still recovering from the stress caused by the recent threat of a service cutoff, related to a patent infringement lawsuit against the parent company RIM.
These legal things can get awfully messy.
Bluetooth, Nokia, Matsushita, Panasonic, Samsung, Ericsson, BlackBerry, RIM, University of Washington, Edwin Suominen
[via Newsday]
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