NFC Times Exclusive Insight – NFC and contactless vendor On Track Innovations has filed new patent infringement lawsuits against U.S. telcos AT&T and Verizon Wireless, less than a week after announcing a settlement with T-Mobile USA in a patent infringement suit it filed in 2012.
OTI, whose shares were trading at or near historic lows, saw its share price jump by 26.5% Wednesday after announcing the new patent lawsuits, though the higher share price at the end of trading for the day was still down by more than 50% since the first of the year alone. And the company said last week its net proceeds from the T-Mobile settlement, when negotiations are complete, are not expected to be significant.
The new suits, filed in the Southern District Court of New York, allege that AT&T and Verizon infringed OTI’s U.S. patent No. 6,045,043 which covers operation of NFC-enabled smartphones that work in conjunction with NFC SIMs. It’s the same accusation that OTI brought against T-Mobile USA, and in that case, District Judge Alison Nathan ruled in a summary judgement earlier this year that T-Mobile had infringed OTI’s patent.
