Wi-LAN (Ottawa, Canada), founded in 1992, has filed an infringement suit against 22 companies - including Acer, Apple, Atheros, Belkin, Best Buy, Broadcom, Buffalo, Dell, D-Link, HP, Intel, Lenovo, Marvell, Netgear, Sony, Texas Instruments and Toshiba - that make or sell Wi-Fi products. The 280 patents canadian company filed a suit 3 years ago against Cisco, and has since found a financial arrangement.

Wi-LAN was known to have worked on the early versions of Wi-Fi, but must not have had enough commercial success. Also active in other technologies like WiMAX and ADSL, Wi-LAN seems to be concentrating on its many patents. Wi-LAN could be preparing another lot of infringement suits against WiMAX players.

Marshall’s court (Texas, USA) is known to be pretty kind with patent holders. This is where Wi-LAN is filing the 22 companies. Reuters believes that Wi-LAN had arranged a financial deal with Toshiba in July concerning it’s patents.

Most astonishing is that Buy and Circuit City, resellers, have been filed. Is Wi-LAN just looking for deep-pocket companies ? I wonder …