Intermec Technologies Corp. and Symbol Technologies Inc. are lobbing lawsuits at each another concerning intellectual property.
In March, Intermec filed a suit in the U.S. District Court in Delaware, charging Symbol with infringement of six Intermec patents that cover technologies such as integrated wireless data capture, portable battery-powered data processing devices and handwritten data processing. The Intermec suit came on the heels of Symbol's wireless patent infringement suit against Intermec, filed in the same court earlier in the month.
As the two companies square off over IP, questions remain about how this will affect EPCGlobal Inc.'s Generation 2 air-interface standard, for which both companies contributed technology. An EPCGlobal spokesperson says the base spec remains royalty-free, but the court battles could impact adoption in the short term.
"Both companies have invested money in R&D to develop IP. Their job is to get as much licensing revenue for it without gutting the market opportunity for themselves," said Simon Yates, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc.
This story was repurposed from the May 2005 issue of Managing Automation magazine.