The University of Texas System has filed a lawsuit against 14 electronics manufacturers in reaction to an alleged infringement upon patent rights.
The patent in question was issued to the UT System in July of 1987 after George Kondraske, a professor of electrical and biomedical engineering at UT Arlington invented software which enables what is known today as text messaging.
The patent describes the product as a means of communication "by manual entry on a keypad using a minimum of key stroke entries."
The software was initially geared toward helping the hearing and speech impaired by allowing them to communicate through a touch-tone phone, but the patent states the software could be used as a communicative medium in any situation where a keyboard with a limited number of keys is being used.
The technology which powers such communication is "predictive text" which is another basis for the lawsuit. "Predictive text" allows the software to predict and complete a word after the user enters the first letter of the text.
"This approach enables an expanded word recognition capability while minimizing memory requirements," according to the patent.
Kondraske said he was unable to comment on the technology Wednesday because of the ongoing litigation.
According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, it is likely that the System will receive a large judgement because of the size of the cell phone industry and the adoption of text messaging via "predictive text" as a standard feature on cell phones.
Sony Ericsson, NEC, Sanyo, Siemens and Sagem are just a few of the companies against which the suit was filed last week in the U.S. District Court in Austin. Dallas law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP has been approved by the UT Board of Regents to represent the UT System.
UT System officials declined to comment Wednesday.
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