PowerDsine Grants License for its Power over Ethernet Midspan Patent to Tyco Electronics
PowerDsine Ltd. (Nasdaq:PDSN), announced that it has granted Tyco Electronics Corp. of Middletown, Pennsylvania a license to use its U.S. Patent Number 6,473,608 in connection with the manufacture and sale of Midspan PoE products.
"We are very pleased that Tyco Electronics has agreed to take a license," said Simon Kahn, PowerDsine's Director of Intellectual Property. "This agreement is a continuation of PowerDsine's intellectual property strategy of providing licenses to companies that want to take an active role in the Power over Ethernet market." PowerDsine's US patent 6,473,608 addresses an Ethernet LAN, in which "power enabled" elements are detected so that current limited power can be distributed safely via spare pairs of the data Ethernet cabling infrastructure to those elements without effecting legacy devices. The patent covers PoE Midspan products that connect to an Ethernet switch in order to PoE-enable an enterprise network.
PowerDsine has been granted similar patents in China, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa which protect the same claims covered by the foregoing United States patent. In addition, PowerDsine has patent applications covering this technology pending in five countries and Europe. PoE is a technology for wired Ethernet. PoE allows the electrical power necessary to operate each device, to be carried by data cables rather than by power cords. It minimizes the number of wires that must be strung in order to install the network.
PoE also potentially reduces the cost of installing end devices such as IP phones and wireless LAN access points. Because the network switches also can deliver power through the standard Ethernet infrastructure, the need to connect each IP phone or wireless LAN access point to a separate electrical circuit and install additional AC power outlets is eliminated. Also, PoE can provide customers with uninterruptible power for critical applications such as IP (Internet protocol) phones, security cameras, entry loggers and other powered data terminals.
