31/5/2007 
Certicom Files Suit Against Sony for Patent Infringement Against Sony

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Certicom Corp. announced in a Thursday press release that it has initiated litigation in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, against Sony Corporation, and related Sony companies, for patent infringement.

In its filing, Certicom alleged infringement concerning two United States patents used in the content protection technologies found in Sony products.

The patents-in-suit are two of Certicom's fundamental patents used in consumer electronics, in particular its world-leading version of Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC).  In its complaint, Certicom alleges Sony has, and continues to, infringe, contribute to and induce the infringement of Certicom's patents by making, using, importing, offering for sale and selling their products in the US without being licensed by Certicom to do so.

These patents are related to content protection technologies, including Advanced Access Control System (AACS) used in Blu-ray and Digital Transmission Content Protection (DTCP) used in wired and wireless distribution of compression audio and video. Products affected include Playstation 3, DVD players, VAIO personal computers and certain high definition TV models and audio equipment.

“We have invested heavily in ECC research and development over many years and feel strongly that our shareholders deserve fair value from companies using our patented technology,” President and CEO Bernard Crotty said.

“We prefer to resolve these issues through commercial discussions and without litigation.  However, at this point we are left with no alternative but to file suit,” he added.

Certicom is represented by the Fish & Neave Intellectual Property Group of US based law firm Ropes & Gray.

Certicom protects the value of your content, applications and devices with government-approved security. Adopted by the National Security Agency (NSA) for classified and sensitive but unclassified government communications, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) provides the most security per bit of any known public-key scheme.