Webtech Wireless (TSE:WEW) said it has learned of a lawsuit filed against it on March 20 by Rothschild Location Technologies LLC in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, alleging the company is guilty of patent infringement.
The lawsuit has not yet been formally served on Webtech.
Rothschild’s complaint concerns Webtech’s Wireless Quadrant Manager Mobile technology, which allows remote entering and sharing of location information.
Rothschild, based in Florida, has sued other companies, claiming similar patent breaches. Last October, it sued American Honda Motor Co. Inc. (ADC:HMC) in US Federal Court, claiming the automaker is illegally using its technology as part of the popular HondaLink and AcuraLink systems.
Webtech plans to refute the lawsuit allegations and defend itself. But the lawsuit, justified or not, is disruptive given a series of setbacks at the company over the past year.
The company's former president and CEO Scott Edmonds resigned suddenly last October 1, and was replaced by chairman Andrew Gutman. Webtech was also thrown into a whirlwind of problems last year when it discovered that a former employee at the company’s British location was suspected of diverting funds into a fraudulent bank account between 2009 and 2012.
The fraud also involved falsified tax reports to British authorities, which created a liability of some C$800,000.
Last week, the company announced a fourth quarter net loss of US$0.3 million while revenue dropped some 8.3 percent to US$6.6 million.
There was some good news, however, in 2015, as the company received a distribution partnership with a Fortune 100 US wireless carrier, the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission (PTC), to implement a Webtech based GPS/AVL fleet management solution.
The British Columbia-based company provides GPS fleet management solutions and global positioning, tracking and wireless solutions for government, commercial transit fleets and consumer vehicles.
Webtech’s popular NextBus unit provides software on demand based real-time passenger information systems using patented technology that predicts transit arrival times based on their geographical locations. The unit provides this information to transit agencies and users over the Internet through interactive voice response.