According to foreign media reports, on May 10, Freedom Patents LLC, a company under Mitsubishi Electric, filed patent infringement lawsuits against five companies, including Hisense, TCL, Tsinghua Tongfang, AOC and AT&T. It is understood that Freedom Patents LLC is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi Electric and owns a number of patents related to improvements in wireless communication technology.

Freedom Patents LLC accused these companies of infringing its U.S. patents US8,284,686, US8,374,096 and US8,514,815, which relate to methods and systems for selecting antennas in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless networks. According to the information, MIMO is a technology that uses multiple antennas to send and receive data simultaneously, which can improve the speed and capacity of wireless networks.

Freedom Patents LLC said that these patents were developed by engineers from Mitsubishi Electric’s North American branch-Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL). MERL is a laboratory known for innovation and long-term research. It was founded in 1991 and focuses on creating new technologies in various industries, including computer graphics, digital communication, medical imaging, transportation and so on. Freedom Patents LLC said that these patents have been cited multiple times by electronics companies such as Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, Ericsson and others in patent applications, proving their technical value.

It is reported that this patent infringement lawsuit is also one of Mitsubishi Electric’s attempts to further monetize its patents. Mitsubishi Electric is one of the largest patent applicants in Japan and ranked second in the world in the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) application ranking released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2019.

It is worth noting that the inventors of these three related patents were Chinese research teams in the early days. After these patents were transferred to Freedom Patents LLC, they have been used to sue companies such as Dish Network, Acer, Version, Comcast and others, mainly targeting equipment and service providers related to network television services. Freedom Patents LLC asked the court to order the defendants to stop the infringement and compensate for its losses and attorney fees. So far, the defendants have not responded to this lawsuit.