Xircom Inc. on Thursday upped the ante in an ongoing PC Card patent spat with rival networking vendor 3Com Corp.
In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Xircom alleges that 3Com's forthcoming Type III PC Card offerings infringe upon patents Xircom holds for its RealPort PC Cards, the Thousand Oaks, California-based vendor said in a statement.
Xircom is asking for sales of the planned 3Com PC Card products to be barred by the court. Both companies are major vendors of mobile data access devices, which often come in the PC Card form factor. The products typically allow users to connect their portable devices, such as notebook computers, to data networks.
The move follows the August serving by 3Com of a PC Card patent infringement suit against Xircom. 3Com had originally filed against Xircom on May 31 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Utah, but said it had held off on serving Xircom with the suit in the hopes of negotiating a settlement [See "3Com Serves Xircom with Patent Lawsuit," Aug. 18.]Xircom, in Thousand Oaks, California, can be reached at +1-805-376-9300, or via the Web at http://www.xircom.com/. 3Com, in Santa Clara, California, is at +1-408-326-5000, or at http://www.3com.com/.