PowerDsine Ltd. (Farmingdale, NY), a leading provider of Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) technology, announced that it has granted a license to Netstar Technology Corp. (Taiwan) for use of PowerDsine's US Patent 6,473,608 in connection with the manufacture and sale of PoE midspan products. The patent addresses an Ethernet local-area netweok (LAN), in which "power-enabled" elements are detected so that power can be distributed safely via spare pairs of an Ethernet cable to those elements without affecting legacy devices. Such legacy devices might include wireless LAN access points, network-based cameras, and VoIP phones.
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. In addition, PowerDsine has patent applications covering this technology pending in Europe and five other countries.
"We are very pleased that Netstar has agreed to license our patented PoE technology," said PowerDsine Director of Intellectual Property Simon Kahn. "This agreement is a continuation of PowerDsine's intellectual property strategy of providing licenses to companies that wish to market Midspan PoE products."
