It’s bad luck, but probably inevitable, that Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) finds itself in the unpleasant position that three of its customers for Bluetooth chips, Nokia, Samsung and Matsushita, are being sued by a US body called WRF Capital for infringing patents.
CSR has got 50 per cent of the Bluetooth chip market. Its chief rival Broadcom has a patent licence from WRF (Washington Research Foundation).
It’s not hard to guess what Broadcom’s salespeople are now telling potential customers.
The protracted legal disputes over the Rambus patents stretching back a decade show how difficult it can be for companies who get tied up in the US litigation system. Cases can go on forever.
However some people manage to extricate themselves expeditiously. One thinks of ARM which had a legal entanglement with the US company picoTurbo, and Wolfson which got sued on the eve of its IPO by Cirrus Logic.
Although ARM and Wolfson had to pay many millions of dollars in fees and costs, they sorted out their issues in a couple of years or so.
Hopefully it will be similarly expeditious for CSR, though, whereas picoTurbo and Cirrus Logic were commercial rivals to ARM and Wolfson, WRF Capital's main purpose is to use the legal process to make money out of patents.
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