Injunction granted in ClearOne case

Injunction granted in ClearOne case
ClearOne has been granted a permanent injunction order prohibiting the use of infringing computer code and products by Biamp Systems Corporation and Wideband Solutions.

Biamp says its current services and technologies remain unaffected.

ClearOne obtained two orders, issued by the federal court on April 9, 2009.

The orders are a result of a case presented to a jury in October and November 2008. The case is pending in federal court in Utah (the "Intellectual Property Case") initiated by ClearOne against Biamp and a group of defendants. The group consists of WideBand; three of WideBand's principals - Dr. Jun Yang, who was a former ClearOne employee, Andrew Chiang, who was previously affiliated with an entity that sold certain assets to ClearOne, and Lonny Bowers; and Versatile DSP, Inc (collectively “Defendents”). On November 5, 2008, the jury returned a unanimous verdict in the Intellectual Property Case in favour of ClearOne and against all of the Defendants, finding that all of the Defendants wilfully and maliciously misappropriated ClearOne's trade secrets.

Biamp Systems said its involvement it the case was as a named co-defendant – based on a license agreement between WideBand Solutions and Biamp.

The United States District Court of Central Utah in Salt Lake City issued a permanent injunction prohibiting WideBand Solutions from any use of the intellectual property, including the AEC-2W algorithm it had previously licensed to Biamp Systems.

Biamp claims it never possessed or had access to the source code for that algorithm, and had ceased using it in 2006. Since 2006, the company says all of its products have contained its own code, which it developed internally.

Biamp says it had no knowledge of any misappropriation of the ClearOne code, and says it will file an appeal.

“ClearOne has pursued a communications strategy which portrays Biamp as the primary target in the case, and misleads the public about Biamp’s role in this lawsuit,” stated Ralph Lockhart, president of Biamp Systems. “Biamp believes this is a desperate attempt to create confusion in the marketplace, and in the minds of our customers. For our company, it is important to clearly communicate the facts.”







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