Sony Smartwatches Infringe Patent on Communication-Server Gateways, Company Claims

Sony Mobile Communications smartwatches and “smart bands” that use Google’s Wear OS platform violate a U.S. patent in the way they communicate with other devices, alleged a complaint (in Pacer) filed Sunday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Beck Branch, a Plano, Texas, limited liability company, owns a March 2005 patent (No. 6,873,620) that describes a communication server acting as a gateway for the transmission of messages between two virtual devices communicating with networks implementing different protocols. The complaint against Sony was one of six actions Beck Branch filed Sunday in the same court alleging infringement of the same patent. Other defendants and their allegedly infringing products or services: (1) Blue Jeans Network (in Pacer), which operates a cloud-based platform for internet-protocol-based communication; (2) Polycom (in Pacer), which markets a unified communications software platform for open standards-based communication, including session initiation protocol (SIP); (3) Motorola Mobility (in Pacer), for its Wear OS smartwatches and fitness bands; (4) Unify (in Pacer), which markets OpenScape as a hybrid unified communications platforms for IP-based communication, including SIP-based communication; (5) Vonage (in Pacer), marketer of unified communications services based on cloud public branch exchange protocol. Defendants didn’t comment Monday.