Post 14 Petition and Complaints filed with USITC Part 2

Today I am going to continue my share on the latest petitions and complaints filed with the USITC. This case is particularly interesting since I had discussed so much about wireless devices, yet hadn't covered the other aspect of wireless communication industry: the wireless network providers. The complaint #2934 on "Wireless Communications Base Stations and Components Thereof" was filed on Jan 24. This complaint was filed by USITC IP trial attorney, Daniel E. Yonan, on behalf of Adaptix Inc. Adaptix is a company that has been recognized as one of the first developers of OFDMA-based wireless systems and 4G-related technologies. Adaptix is now pursuing an import restriction on the products developed by Ericsson, the world's largest maker of equipment for building mobile telecommunications networks.

This complaint involved a patent infringement of U.S. Patent No. 6,870,808, regarding to the wireless network application of the base station using an orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (OFDMA) protocol. Again, because the case is relatively new, according to the news released on Feb 25, the court have not make a decision yet. But note that USITC guarantees a target date for completing the investigation within 45 days after institution of the investigation, which is generally much faster than a court investigation. I am curious about whether this would affect the mobile network operations if this complaint get approved since ITC can only penalize the violators by import restrictions. While Adaptix sure have similar products as the Ericsson's base stations, I doubt their software and communication protocol will be the same. So the result of this complaint may result in some headaches not only to Ericsson, but wireless network providers companies (Verizon, AT&T, T-mobile, Spirit ... etc.) that uses Ericsson's base stations for their mobile networks.