Virtually all of ViaSat’s ground station products and satellite communication services infringe Space Systems Loral patents, according to Loral CEO Michael Targoff.
In an email to SatelliteFinance, after SS/L submitted a countersuit in response to…
Virtually all of ViaSat’s ground station products and satellite communication services infringe Space Systems Loral patents, according to Loral CEO Michael Targoff.
In an email to SatelliteFinance, after SS/L submitted a countersuit in response to ViaSat’s accusations that the manufacturer had itself infringed patents, Targoff claimed the operator had been breaching its intellectual property for years.
“This lawsuit will provide access to confidential ViaSat documents that we expect will confirm that this infringement of SS/L’s intellectual property is core to ViaSat’s architecture and it will reveal the magnitude of damages to which SS/L is entitled,” he said.
“We understand that over the last few years alone, ViaSat’s revenue from the sales of these infringing products is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
More specifically, as highlighted in the countersuit SS/L submitted to a Californian district court on 9 April, the manufacturer states that ViaSat should have notified patent authorities of a Lockheed Martin system called Astrolink. Aspects of this system, SS/L claims, constitute as ‘prior art’, which would have diluted the lawsuit ViaSat filed in February that accuses the manufacturer of infringing patents and breaching non-disclosure obligations.
SS/L’s lawsuit states: “The Astrolink-Phase II system is just one of myriad examples of the prior art that exists for ViaSat’s and ViaSat Communications’ patents.
“Numerous FCC applications, industry conference papers and presentations, and even basic reference materials such as the Communications Satellite Handbook (Gordon & Morgan, 1989) disclose the same satellite design principles that ViaSat and ViaSat Communications now claim as their own.”
ViaSat filed its complaint against SS/L on 1 February. The original dispute centres on SS/L’s role in building high-throughput Ka-band satellites for both ViaSat and its broadband competitor Hughes. ViaSat has pointed to similarities between the satellite it launched in October, called ViaSat-1, and the Jupiter bird that Hughes is seeking to launch later this year. Both are expected to offer comparable services across the US.
Earlier this year, the two companies had attempted to resolve the matter without court action, but ViaSat announced on 21 February that these negotiations had not been successful.
SS/L is being represented by Susman Godfrey LLP.
ViaSat was unable to comment before the press deadline.
