Patent Law

No Noise Reduction

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Headphone makers Bose and Lightspeed haven't come up to speed for a complete cross-licensing of their noise-reduction technologies, so they keep at each other. In 2002, Lightspeed settled with Bose over an Oregon court battle, Lightspeed's home turf. Bose agreed to lay off Lightspeed for improvements to Lightspeed's headsets.  In 2007, Lightspeed came out with its new Zulu model. So Bose has just plugged Lightspeed into a suit in Boston, Bose's home boombox, alleging Zulu is not just an improvement, covered under the previous agreement, but new technology infringing Bose's 5,181,252, which is a rather old patent (filed 1991). Bose is already blaring at other headphone makers at the ITC over '252.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on February 18, 2009 (boomark / email).