GPS patents

From Yenra

On August 8, 2008, Broadcom announced that a U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) judge today ruled that products of SiRF infringe six patents related to improving global positioning system (GPS) processing and sensitivity. The patents are held by Global Locate, a subsidiary of Broadcom.

The Initial Determination containing the infringement ruling followed a trial earlier this year. A Final Determination by the full six-person Commission is expected by early December.

The infringement findings cover a range of SiRF products, including those incorporating the SiRFstarIII and SiRFInstant GPS architectures.

The six patents that SiRF was found to infringe are United States patents 6,417,801; 6,937,187; 6,606,346; 7,158,080; 6,704,651; 6,651,000 -- relating to extended ephemeris assistance (Long Term Orbits), calculating time in GPS receivers, enhancing sensitivity in assisted GPS systems, and implementing hardware structures for parallel correlation.