Acer Sues Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile, Alleging Infringment on Acer's Cellular Networking Patents (nerds.xyz) 32
Slashdot reader BrianFagioli writes: Acer has filed three separate patent infringement lawsuits against AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, taking the unusual step of hauling the nation's largest wireless carriers into federal court. The suits, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, claim the companies are using Acer-developed cellular networking technology without paying for the privilege. Acer says it tried to negotiate licenses for years but reached a dead end, arguing it was left with no option except litigation. The case centers on six U.S. patents Acer asserts are core to modern wireless networks, rather than anything tied to PCs or laptops.
The company describes itself as reluctant to pursue courtroom battles, but it has been quietly building a large global patent portfolio after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D. Acer also notes that some of its patents count as standard-essential, hinting the carriers may be required to license them. All three companies are expected to push back, and the dispute could become another long-running telecom patent saga. Consumers will not notice any immediate changes, but if Acer wins or settles, it may find a new revenue stream far beyond its traditional hardware business.
Further coverage from Hot Hardware
The company describes itself as reluctant to pursue courtroom battles, but it has been quietly building a large global patent portfolio after pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into R&D. Acer also notes that some of its patents count as standard-essential, hinting the carriers may be required to license them. All three companies are expected to push back, and the dispute could become another long-running telecom patent saga. Consumers will not notice any immediate changes, but if Acer wins or settles, it may find a new revenue stream far beyond its traditional hardware business.
Further coverage from Hot Hardware
Standards should not include patented things (Score:5, Insightful)
"Acer also notes that some of its patents count as standard-essential, hinting the carriers may be required to license them"
Many people will disagree with me, but I don't think patented ideas/concepts/inventions should be included in any standards.
If it's a standard it should be available for anyone who wants to make a compatible widget or device or program to use. Anything "restricted" makes the standard less useful.
It's very lucrative for companies to get their patented things included in a standard, and they push for this to happen for just that reason.
But it should not be allowed. If you have a patented idea, go ahead and develop it and license it as you choose. But if you're developing a standard, keep your patent out of it.
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Mostly I'm surprised to learn that Acer still exists. Or perhaps the Acer computer company I dealt with more than 30 years ago disappeared and the name was picked up by someone else?
On your substance, this example might be relevant: If your book is adopted as a textbook in Japan, you lose your copyright. The basic idea is that all official textbook material should be accessible to everyone, which includes access to copies. Your textbook gets a big boost in sales up front, but it's not going to last and you
Re:Standards should not include patented things (Score:4, Informative)
I'm surprised to learn that Acer still exists.
What do you mean? Acer consistently ranks above Dell in market share or units sold https://laptopmedia.com/in/hig... [laptopmedia.com] https://www.accio.com/business... [accio.com] https://coolest-gadgets.com/la... [coolest-gadgets.com]
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Mostly I'm surprised to learn that Acer still exists. Or perhaps the Acer computer company I dealt with more than 30 years ago disappeared and the name was picked up by someone else?
30 Years ago Acer was a force to be reckoned with. This Acer is that same acer, but is severely diminished from its former glory.
As it would apply here, getting your patented idea incorporated in a public standard should effectively void copyright-protection lawsuits. Public standards need to be insulated from monetary considerations?
Actualy no, it would be worse. Your standard would probably be subpar, because all the best technologies would be patented. AND you would have to walk a minefield trying to concot a standard that does not infringe any patents (including pending/submarine ones) and use only non patented technologies, or thechnologies whose patents expired. Take a look at the process of creation of
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I never knew that Acer was into cellular anything, let alone have patents
They were the owners of Benq. They later sold Benq, but that does not mean that they stoper doing R&D on Cellular, or that they could not re-enter the cellular R&D space at a latter date,
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From what I recall, Benq was making peripherals, like optical drives, speakers and so on
https://www.gsmarena.com/benq-... [gsmarena.com]
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What's super disgusting are things like building codes. In other words, actual laws, that are contracted out by governments to third parties, which then retain the copyright. So, the actual law is copyrighted by a private entity. That is truly, truly disgusting.
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That is not completely true. The laws themselves are just a collection of facts and therefor cannot be copyrighted. They can, however, require following a specific industry code like building codes, electrical codes, fire codes, and heating/plumbing codes that are industry standards.
For example, purchasing the National Electric Code book for 2026 costs about $169, but normally is only needed by licensed electricians and electrical companies. Private individuals can get free online access to the code for
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That is not completely true. The laws themselves are just a collection of facts and therefor cannot be copyrighted. They can, however, require following a specific industry code like building codes, electrical codes, fire codes, and heating/plumbing codes that are industry standards.
Note completely true, perhaps, but not untrue either. At best it could be called a gray area. Having a law that says, effectively, "Follow this outside organizations copyrighted regulations" is basically just a loophole.
Generally speaking, of course, the NEC and the NFPA itself are not all that bad. That said, they are industry organizations that get to write the law and they can, and do, write it in their favor. If it's going to be the law to follow the code, the code should be prepared by actual governmen
Re:Standards should not include patented things (Score:5, Informative)
Many people will disagree with me, but I don't think patented ideas/concepts/inventions should be included in any standards.
If it's a standard it should be available for anyone who wants to make a compatible widget or device or program to use.
I'm ambivalent one way or another, but the way these standards generally work is the companies get together and hash out a standard based on various patents they hold, then form a pool to license them out under FRAND rules (Fair, Reasonable, Non-Discriminatory.)
I almost guarantee Acer's patents are "submarined," meaning they waited for the standard to come out, didn't say anything about their patents, *then* asked for licensing. I don't think they were included in developing the original 5G spec and are trying to shoehorn their way in.
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"Acer also notes that some of its patents count as standard-essential, hinting the carriers may be required to license them"
Many people will disagree with me, but I don't think patented ideas/concepts/inventions should be included in any standards.
If it's a standard it should be available for anyone who wants to make a compatible widget or device or program to use. Anything "restricted" makes the standard less useful.
It's very lucrative for companies to get their patented things included in a standard, and they push for this to happen for just that reason.
But it should not be allowed. If you have a patented idea, go ahead and develop it and license it as you choose. But if you're developing a standard, keep your patent out of it.
Patents essential to a standard ussualy have to be licensed under FRAND terms. Sometimes this is done through a Pool, to simplify licensing (but pooling the paptents is not a hard requirement for standard essential patents). Sometimes, Pools splinter. And sometimes each company goes at it alone.
Probably the disagreement here is either that the FRAND terms offered by Acer are not FRAND enough (in the view of the big three), or the three big-uns feel they do not need to pay a dime because their providers (the
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Patents are "might makes right". The original lettres patent were royal decrees including, but not limited to, various types of monopoly grants. Those included things like hunting rights over an area or exclusive control of a particular kind of trade or service to nobility and cronies, etc. A famous example is the East India Trade Company and, if you are from the US, you might be familiar with the royal charter (patent) granting them a tea monopoly that lead to a famous tea party in Boston. Basically, pate
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Except of course that people can just reverse engineer the technology. As it stands, obfuscation of how to actually make the "invention" is pretty standard these days. No one uses the patent as a realistic reference to make the technology. Either they reverse engineer the technology, or someone skilled in the art just needs to know what the "invention" in the patent does and they recreate it without a reference.
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Issue is that if anything patented was excluded from standards, we wouldn't be able to have things like WiFi or much beyond 2G cellular, or it would all be proprietary networks and iPhones wouldn't be able to call Android devices.
R&D is also expensive so companies need to see some return on it when integrated into standards.
Normally they are required to licence such patents in a non-discriminatory way and at a reasonable cost, but of course there are disagreements. Many companies avoid paying actual mon
Eastern District of Texas? (Score:2)
What poor schmuck of a ma-and-pa computer company did Acer include in their lawsuit within the Eastern District of Texas in order to bring their lawsuit in that particular court?
District-shopping has been a thing for a long time and that particular district has been popular with IP trolls.
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IANAL (tee hee) but I think Acer can pick either the jurisdiction where THEY do business or where the defendant does business. Cell phone companies have towers and retail storefronts in pretty much every place imaginable so I think that's why Acer can get away with forum shopping for their patent lawsuit.
I would also note that at someone who *lives* in the jurisdiction of this court, it's been a pain because Apple closed all of their Apple Stores in Collin County which not only dealt a big blow to the local
A method of power reporting (Score:2)
“A method of power reporting for a mobile device configured with a plurality of uplink component carriers and/or parallel PUCCH and PUSCH transmission in a wireless communication system is disclosed.”
“PUCCH (Physical Uplink Control Channel) is the dedicated uplink control channel used by the UE to send control information (HARQ ACK/NACK, channel quality, scheduling request, etc.) to the base sta
Why go after end users of equipment? (Score:2)
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Patent Laws Are Garbage (Score:2)
Standard-essential should never be a thing that can be patented privately. If a patent because a standard, the patent (and any others associated) should be automatically be opened.
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becomes**
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If there's a viable alternative to the standard than maybe not. But it looks like Acer is hitting every major carrier in the US. It'd be nice to know how or why these patented technologies wound up being used by every carrier . . .
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It'd be nice to know how or why these patented technologies wound up being used by every carrier . . .
From TFS: "Acer also notes that some of its patents count as standard-essential"
'Nuff said.
Having said that, normally in telecom, the patent royalties are paid either by the handset makers (the apples and Samsungs of this world), the equipment makers (the nokias and areicssons of this world) or both.
More so if Mirnotoriety is right, and the patent in question is U.S. patent number: 8,737,333. which covers signaling between the handset and the RAN.
So, I think Acer is trying to Double-Dip here (charging the o
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I'm aware that they're considered to be essential. The question is, why? Are there any viable alternatives? If not, why not? Were standards manipulated to specifically include patented technologies? Who established the standard, and to what extent were government bodies (FCC etc) involved in the ratification process?
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I'm aware that they're considered to be essential. The question is, why? Are there any viable alternatives? If not, why not? Were standards manipulated to specifically include patented technologies? Who established the standard, and to what extent were government bodies (FCC etc) involved in the ratification process?
You will need to read chapter one of the tanemmbaumb book on networks, there is a wholle section dedicated to Standard setting methods. And do some more research on top (but please, for the love of all that is holly, do not ask an AI assistant about it)
The TL;DR is:
a.) standards bodies (some govermental, some private, some mixed) covene to "define a standard", in this case the 3GPP (the 3GPP is completely private, but works hand in hand with the ITU-T and ITU-R, In the past, they worked closely with ETSI as