Defendant
2 cases as defendant.
Nortel Networks Ltd. ("Nortel"; historically Northern Telecom / Northern Electric) was a Canadian multinational telecommunications and data-networking equipment manufacturer. It was founded in 1895 in Montreal as the Northern Electric and Manufacturing Company and was headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. The company was publicly traded on the TSX and NYSE and, from 1983 to 2000, was majority-controlled by BCE Inc.; Nortel Networks Corporation (NNC) was created as a new parent above NNL in 2000. At its 2000 peak it reported over US$30 billion in revenue and more than 90,000 employees. Nortel filed for bankruptcy protection in January 2009 and was wound down, with the estate effectively defunct by 2013. It is no longer an operating company.
Products / operations. Nortel made carrier and enterprise networking equipment, including DMS-family digital central-office switches, optical transport systems, wireless infrastructure (CDMA and GSM/UMTS), enterprise VoIP/telephony and metro Ethernet products (partly via its 1998 Bay Networks acquisition). Its large R&D base produced a patent portfolio of roughly 4,000 assets spanning networking, communications and internet technologies.
Patent-litigation posture. The structured data show Nortel Networks Ltd. as a defendant in 2 tracked cases and plaintiff in 0 — the profile of an operating company being sued, not an NPE asserting an acquired portfolio. Both tracked matters were filed 17 August 2007 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware by Vonage Holdings/Holding Inc. against Nortel Networks Inc. and related entities. No plaintiff-side assertions by NNL appear in the data.
Notable cases / context. The two tracked suits (Vonage Holdings Corp. v. Nortel Networks Inc. et al. and Vonage Holding Inc. v. Nortel Networks Inc. et al., D. Del., 2007) arose during the VoIP patent disputes of that era and predate Nortel's bankruptcy. External context: after the 2009 bankruptcy, Nortel's patent portfolio was auctioned in 2011 and sold for US$4.5 billion to the Rockstar Consortium (Apple, Microsoft, RIM, Ericsson, Sony), which later asserted those patents; Rockstar's assets were subsequently acquired by RPX in 2014. Those later assertions were made by Rockstar, not by Nortel.
Note: the tracked cases here reflect only two 2007 defendant appearances; I did not verify additional Nortel litigation beyond this data.
Vonage filed a declaratory-judgment action against Nortel seeking a declaration that U.S. Patent Nos. 6,091,808, 6,445,695, and 7,050,861 are invalid, void, and/or unenforceable. Nortel counterclaimed alleging Vonage induced infringement of the '808 patent. The parties settled and agreed to dismiss all claims and counterclaims without prejudice in 2008.
Vonage Holding Inc. filed a patent action against Nortel Networks Inc. and Nortel Networks Ltd. in the District of Delaware. Nortel answered and counterclaimed for patent infringement, asserting U.S. Patent No. 5,991,389 and multiple other patents against Vonage. The final disposition of the case was not confirmed in the narrative.