Blackberry has initiated litigation against Avaya in the Northern District of Texas. In a suit, filed on 27th July, Blackberry alleges that the Santa Clara-based company has infringed eight of its US patents relating to various mobile communications technologies.
The patents in question are numbers 9143801, 8964849, 8116739, 8886212, 8688439, 7440561, 8554218 and 737296, which were originally filed as applications at the USPTO between 1998 and 2011.
- Nos. 9,143,801 and 8,964,849, relating to “significance maps” for coding video data;
- No. 8,116,739, describing methods of displaying messages;
- No. 8,886,212, describing tracking location of mobile devices;
- No. 8,688,439, relating to speech decoding and compression;
- No. 7,440,561, describing integrating wireless phones into a PBX network;
- No. 8,554,218, describing call routing methods; and
- No. 7,372,961, a method of generating a cryptographic public key.
Products targeted by Blackberry include Avaya’s video conferencing systems, Avaya Communicator for iPad, a product that connects mobile users to IP Office systems, and various IP desk phones.
BlackBerry argues that it should be paid for its history of innovation going back nearly 20 years.
“BlackBerry revolutionised the mobile industry. BlackBerry… has invented a broad array of new technologies that cover everything from enhanced security and cryptographic techniques, to mobile device user interfaces, to communication servers, and many other areas.”
In its complaint filed last week, Blackberry states that it wrote to Avaya pointing out the alleged infringements on 17th December 2015. The fact that BlackBerry are now taking this action would suggest that any licensing negotiations that were being undertaken have broken down.
The filing is not a brief document, it is incredibly detailed and runs to over 100 pages.
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