Intersil said Thursday that Proxim’s patent claims regarding wireless local area networking (LAN) technologies are without merit and vowed to fight those claims.
Wireless networking vendor Proxim (Nasdaq:PROX) last week sued Intersil and other vendors, including 3Com, Cisco, SMC, Symbol and Wayport, for patent infringement. Proxim said that it has patents that cover technologies in the commonly used in IEEE 802.11b wireless networking products.
That wireless networking technology, long popular in the enterprise, is increasingly being used for home wireless networking products. Proxim sells wireless home networking products based on the competing HomeRF standard. Proxim offered to license the 802.11b-related technology to the companies it sued for patent infringement.
“We feel that their (Proxim’s) claims of patent infringement are without merit,” Intersil’s president and CEO Greg Williams said Thursday. “We intend to vigorously defend ourselves against Proxim’s claims.”