FEDERAL COURTS RATIFY PULSE~LINK PATENTS IN UWB-OVER-COAX PATENT INFRINGEMENT CASE AGAINST TZERO
San Diego, CA—June 23, 2008 –; Under the Consent Judgment on file with the United States District Court, Southern District of California, Pulse~LINK patents 6,895,034 and 7,099,368 have been stipulated as valid and enforceable in the UWB-Over-Coax patent infringement case filed against Tzero Technologies. The judgment was announced today as part of a settlement agreement between Ultra Wideband (UWB) semiconductor company, Pulse~LINK, Inc., and Tzero Technologies.
Federal litigation against Tzero alleged that, by making, using and selling UWB-Over-Coax solutions, Tzero was violating Pulse~LINK patents which are fundamental to UWB communications over wired media such as coaxial cable, power line and phone wires. In the settlement, Tzero affirmed it has suspended development of products that were the subject of the legal action, and agreed that before re-introducing any such product it shall first obtain a license from Pulse~LINK. Pulse~LINK, in turn, has agreed to grant Tzero a fair and commercially reasonable license in the event Tzero requests such a license in the future.
Pulse~LINK has a long history of willingness to license CWave® UWB technology and its associated Intellectual Property, and has made RAND licensing assurances stipulating so within several industry organizations. "We welcome a multi-supplier silicon ecosystem for UWB-Over-Coax, provided solutions are properly designed for both wired and wireless environments and deliver the quality and performance of CWave," states Bruce Watkins, co-founder and President/COO for Pulse~LINK. "We remain committed to contributing our considerable body of Intellectual Property within industry groups willing to collaborate so that best-in-class performance, interoperability and peaceful signal-coexistence are assured for the consumer."
"The ratification of our IP rights by a federal judge is extremely significant and a positive milestone for all innovative start-up companies who invest millions to invent and productize their technology," states John Santhoff, Pulse~LINK co-founder and CTO. "We have made an ongoing and massive investment into building the world’s most comprehensive UWB Intellectual Property portfolio in order to ensure that the vision for whole-home multimedia networks could be properly delivered to the greatest benefit of consumers and the industry."
Pulse~LINK is widely recognized as the pioneer of a broad range of UWB technologies. Since 2002, Pulse~LINK has publicly demonstrated whole-home high definition multimedia networking using a combination of wired and wireless UWB. The company developed its CWave® technology from the ground up to be specifically optimized for this application, while the remaining UWB industry pursued an approach best optimized to replace USB data cables. Pulse~LINK was the first to invent and demonstrate UWB over band limited channels such as coaxial cables – an innovation for which CTO John Santhoff was recognized by EE Times as "Innovator of the Year." Pulse~LINK was also the first UWB company to develop and publicly demonstrate Wireless-for-HDMI in 2005.
Pulse~LINK’s wired/wireless solution enables a true "Digital Home Cinema" experience with room-to-room networking of High Definition content. Devices enabled with the CWave® UWB chipset allow HD content located anywhere in the home to be shared across the existing coax backbone, in addition to wireless connectivity within each room for Set-top Boxes, HDTVs, DVRs, DVD players, Gaming Devices, Media Center PCs, and other multimedia equipment. CWave enables HD content to be streamed throughout the home with End-to-End Quality of Service, while still preserving content protection mechanisms.
About Pulse~LINK, Inc.
Pulse~LINK, Inc. is a privately held Delaware Corporation headquartered in Carlsbad, California, with more than 300 issued and pending patents pertaining to UWB wired and wireless communications. Pulse~LINK's CWave® UWB technology is a "no-new-wires" solution that delivers up to Gigabit data rates over coax and wireless networks from the same chipset, providing consumers with the unprecedented ability to distribute high quality multimedia content throughout the home. CWave® solutions support simultaneous operation of 1394, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI over coax and wireless connections. For additional information about Pulse~LINK, Inc., please visit: http://www.pulselink.net.
Forward-Looking Statements: Any statements contained in this release that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All forward-looking statements rely on assumptions and are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations.
###