Patent troll sues just about the whole tech biz over 4 years

A patent holding firm has made it its business to sue just about every tech firm anyone has heard of in its quest to make money from an encryption patent, it has emerged.

In the last four years, TQP Development has kept its lawyers busy with complaints against hundreds of companies, including big boys of tech like Google, Intel, Samsung and Apple.

The prodigious litigator, spotted by the CipherLaw Blog, has made Intel, Wind River and Hertz its latest opponents citing its patent for using a shared seed value to generate pseudo-random key values at transmitter and receiver.

TQP has specifically referenced Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Transport Layer Security (TSL) protocols combined with the RC4 encryption algorithm in some of the cases, all filed in East Texas.

So far, none of the cases have gone to trial, a situation TQP is probably quite happy with since some of the firms have settled. The case against Apple was dismissed after the fruity firm settled for an undisclosed amount and online broker TD Ameritrade also settled with the firm.

Usually a patent holding company doesn't actually want to go to trial, it just wants to get licence fees and the firms that it sues often figure it works out better just to pay it what can be a small amount rather than going through the expense and risk of a trial.

The full exhaustive list of the companies against whom TQP has filed suit is available at CipherLaw Blog. ®