Inventor accuses Cisco of patent infringement

Attorneys for Allen Kaplan filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Cisco Systems today in a U.S. District Court for the eastern district of Texas. The suit alleges that Cisco’s intelligent routers make use of technology that is protected by four patents owned by ConnectTel, a company Mr. Kaplan founded with a co-inventor. Kaplan--a Miami inventor and ConnectTel’s only employee--claims Cisco appropriated his designs after declining the chance to license the intelligent routing technology he developed in 1996.

“Kaplan’s innovative intelligent routing system was the first to allow a real-time optimization for the outward distribution of data to a plurality of venues,” the complaint said. “[The system] was revolutionary and provided the premier method and apparatus for the real-time dynamic selection of an optimal data path from a plurality of available paths by analyzing both static and dynamically changing variables and user priorities.”

“[The system] was also the premier technology to consider properties of the data to be transmitted before selecting the optimal data path for transmission to the final destination,” the complaint continued. “[It] was a major catalyst for change in the communications industry—forever changing the ways companies do business.”

Daniel Perez, one of the attorneys representing Mr. Kaplan, said the suit involves Cisco’s 5350 access server as well as potentially “a large percentage of [Cisco’s] intelligent routers.”

The suit seeks compensation for unspecified damages--which Perez said could be hundreds of millions of dollars--as well as an injunction barring Cisco from selling products that make use of the technology in question.

The complaint filed today makes 200 claims of infringement regarding four patents, which were filed between 1996 and 2000.

Cisco did not immediately return a request for comment.