The Washington Research Foundation has sued mobile phone makers Nokia , Samsung and Matsushita for infringing on a patent for wireless Bluetooth technology.
"Defendants have manufactured, used, imported into the United
States, sold and offered for sale devices which, or the use of
which, infringes at least the '963' patent," Washington Research
Foundation said in a complaint filed at the United States Western
District Court of Washington State at Seattle.
In particular the research institute targeted products containing
Bluetooth chips from British chip maker CSR , which is the world
market leader for the chips which connect electronic gadgets such
as cellphones, headsets and laptops.
Shares in CSR, whose Bluetooth chip global market share is more
than 50 percent, fell 4.3 percent at 631 pence in London by 0840
GMT, underperforming a 0.4 percent lower European technology
index .
CSR was not sued by the research group.
The research group set apart CSR rival Broadcom from the United
States, which has acquired a license to use the radio frequency
receiver technology patented in 1999, the Washington Research
Foundation said.
Engineer Jaap Haartsen at Swedish mobile phone maker Ericsson has
been credited with the invention of Bluetooth during his research
work in the second half of the 1990s.
Ericsson has donated the technology, royalty-free, to create a
large market for the wire replacement.
Since then, hundreds of millions of mobile phones, headsets and
laptops are equipped with Bluetooth chips every year.