Juniper's router empire threatened by Nortel patent holder suit

Juniper is facing a patent infringement suit from Spherix, an intellectual property development company, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware over claims that it infringes five router patents.

The patents cited in the suit were developed by Nortel Networks and acquired by Spherix in December 2013. The patents cover router and switching technology that Juniper sells. Spherix said that the scope of Juniper's infringement of the asserted patents has been and continues to be "substantial." 

Juniper did not respond to a request for comment on the suit.

In the suit, Spherix alleges that for Juniper's fiscal year ending Dec. 31, Juniper had revenues of over $2.24 billion from routers, $638 million from switches and more than $790 million from services.

The IP development company added that the majority of Juniper's revenue from at least January 2011 until the present is and has been generated by products and services implementing technology that infringes the asserted patents.

Juniper isn't Spherix's only target. These five patents are the same it previously asserted against Juniper's main rival Cisco.

Patent disputes between vendors, service providers and technology patent holders have become a common occurrence in the telecom and networking industries. Three of the largest U.S.-based telcos, AT&T (NYSE: T), CenturyLink (NYSE: CTL) and Windstream (Nasdaq: WIN), are being sued by Intellectual Ventures, a patent holding company, over violating various DSL patents.

For more:
- see the release

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