Nortel and Ciena Settle Intellectual Property Battle

Telecom News Editorials Reports Glossary

6:30 am on August 9, 2006 | Category: Business, Law

Nortel Networks and Ciena have agreed to settle their differences in a recent patent dispute, announcing plans to cross-license their patented technologies and drop all lawsuits against each other.

Ciena had filed six legal complaints against its Canadian competitor last year at a district courthouse in eastern Texas. This dispute involved allegations that Nortel had infringed upon Ciena’s Asynchronous Transfer Mode switching patents, as well as its division multiplexing and Sonet technologies. Nortel filed its own counter-suit shortly afterwards.

This settlement marks an end to the long-running legal dispute between the two companies, which dates back to the year 2000.