Bell Northern Research Alleges LG Devices Infringe 8 Wireless Patents

The G7 ThinQ smartphone is among LG mobile devices, home electronics products and smart appliances infringing eight wireless and communications-technology patents, alleged a Bell Northern Research complaint (in Pacer) Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Diego. BNR, formed in 2017, is “successor in interest” to a “key portfolio” of IP developed at Agere, Broadcom, LSI, Renesas and others, it said. Since the G7 is advertised as being compliant with the “beamforming portions” of the 802.11ac wireless standard, the phone “contains modules operable to compute one or more channel estimate matrices from signals received from a base station,” infringing U.S. patent 7,957,450, granted in June 2011 and assigned to Broadcom, it said. BNR executives met top LG officials in Seoul at least three times in the past year, including as recently as Nov. 30, to give a “detailed presentation” of the infringement, yet LG's bad practices continued, it said. LG didn’t comment.