Global Locate Sues SiRF for Patent Infringement
Global Locate, Inc., announced that it is filing today an Answer and Counterclaims against SiRF Technology, Inc in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California seeking monetary damages and an injunction against SiRF's infringement of four of Global Locate's Assisted-GPS technology patents. This tit-for-tat filing counters SiRF's claims that Global Locate is infringing on SiRF's patents. Seems like the bottom line is that this, like the Garmin vs. TomTom suits, is one aspect of the increasingly competitive and lucrative GPS business. This is when the winners and losers are decided in the GPS game, and they are fighting for survival here.
From their press release: "Global Locate is filing its Answer and Counterclaims in response to a claim that SiRF initiated on December 15, 2006, after SiRF's stock price dropped precipitously on news that TomTom, a major SiRF customer, had awarded a significant contract to Global Locate. Global Locate believes that SiRF's complaint lacks merit and will fail."
Humm, while this doesn't say that TomTom has picked Global Locate, doesn't it feel a little more real that they did with some statement like this? If they didn't, wouldn't Global Locate just leave it at something like "They sued us and they are wrong so we're suing them."
More from the press release....
As described in its Counterclaims, Global Locate's Patent No.s 6,542,820 and 6,560,534 cover proprietary, Long Term Orbit (LTO(tm)) technology invented by Global Locate. LTO extends for several days the usability period of ephemeris assistance data, thereby minimizing the start-up time and enhancing the sensitivity of mobile devices. Global Locate Patent No. 6,704,651 covers certain proprietary processing algorithms that utilize ephemeris data to improve sensitivity in a GPS receiver. Global Locate Patent No. 6,606,346 covers proprietary techniques for achieving massive parallel correlation, such as used in Global Locate GPS products, including Hammerhead(tm), the world's first single die GPS receiver IC. Global Locate alleges that each of these patents has been, and is being, infringed by SiRF.
A copy of Global Locate's Answer and Counterclaims is available at www.globallocate.com/counterclaim.pdf
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Posted by Scott Martin at January 8, 2007 9:28 AM
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