Openwave sues Apple and RIM

MOBILE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER Openwave has filed a lawsuit against Apple and Research in Motion (RIM) over their alleged use of its technology.

In papers filed this week the firm has accused the tablet and smartphone makers of infringing its patents. Openwave has asked the US International Trade Commission (ITC) for an import ban on their products as a result. And no, that is not deja vu you are feeling. This sort of thing does happen more or less every day at the US ITC.

At issue here are the Blackberry Curve 9330 handset, the Playbook tablet, and the Apple Iphone 3, 3G, 4, Ipod Touch and Ipad. Openwave has filed details about the patents it owns and the ones that it believes the targeted firms are infringing.

Openwave has requested a ban on sales and imports, according to the court papers, and this practice should feel rather familiar at Apple, since that firm is asking for similar bans on Samsung's products in the US and EU, while Samsung is asking for the same thing back against Apple.

Openwave said that it is but a small player in the market, despite having some good patents, and that it has approached both firms to see if they would like to legally license its patents. They apparently have refused, and now it is looking for actual compensation, as the complaint explains.

In the papers filed with the ITC, Openwave added that it has no option but "to seek to exclude their infringing products from the United States".

"Openwave invented technologies that became foundational to the mobile Internet. We believe that these large companies should pay us for the use of our technologies, particularly in light of the substantial revenue these companies have earned from devices that use our intellectual property," said Ken Denman, CEO of Openwave in a statement.

"Before filing these complaints, we approached both of these companies numerous times in an attempt to negotiate a license of our technology with them and did not receive a substantive response."

The five patents at issue cover accessing email over a mobile phone when there is no internet connection, the method and system for securely interacting with managed data on multiple devices, which involves the cloud, client machines and servers, a means of updating applications that are already installed on a handset, and a method for delivering multiple web pages at a time.

Openwave explained that it already has customers licensing these technologies, adding that the firms were knowingly infringing on them while importing their hardware into the US. µ