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Telecommunications QPSX granted US patent of key component of ATM
Telecommunications QPSX granted US patent of key component of ATM | QPSX granted US patent of key component of ATM |
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| by Stuart Corner | |
| Monday, 16 January 2006 | |
  
It has received formal Notice of Allowance for a US patent covering its Segmentation and Reassembly (SAR) technology and says it expects to receive the formal patent certificate within eight to ten weeks. QPSX was set up in the mid 1980s to commercialise a packet switching technology developed at the University of Western Australia which promised transmission speeds much faster than currently available systems. It achieved limited commercial success and QPSX languished for a number of years before launching an IPO and raising around $10 million in 2000 on the strength of these intellectual property rights, which it had hitherto made no attempt to exercise. It has been pursuing its claims mainly on two fronts: seeking to obtain a US patent for the technology and taking action in the courts in Germany against Siemens and Deutsche Telekom to extract licence fees. The company said a most important aspect of the patent was that it had been allowed following the consideration by the US Patent Office of all prior art documents cited by Deutsche Telekom in its arguments against QPSX's IPR claims. The German Patent Court ruled that QPSX's patent was invalid in light of this prior art. "The notice of allowance is an endorsement of our position that the prior art cited in the German Patent Court case was not relevant to the question of validity" Graham Griffiths, QPSX CEO said, "it is very timely as the German Supreme Court is now actively considering QPSX's appeal in the matter". This will be good news for investors: revenue from SAR licences is years behind initial forecasts. The prospectus for the IPO forecast $18 million in FY2002 from SAR licence fees, but the company has so far failed to secure any revenue from this source. The prospectus, issued in November 2000, also played down the likelihood of IP technology replacing ATM in carriers' core networks: This transition, however is now well underway. |
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