As the saying goes, every time an iPhone is dropped, another
wide sweeping patent lawsuit in the tech world sprouts up in the
plaintiff-friendly US District courts of east Texas. Okay, so
perhaps there's no factual basis for that, but who knows if the
latest case filed by suit-happy Canadian wireless company WiLAN
against Comcast, Time Warner, and Charter Communications is any
more legitimate. The dispute is over US patent No. 5,661,602,
which is one of the company's 970 issued or pending patents, and
was awarded in 1998. It covers "hybrid multichannel data
transmission systems utilizing a broadcast medium" -- a.k.a. the
broadcasting of data to remote networks and computers. WiLAN has
tapped their ole' favorite US law firm, McKool Smith for the
case, and asserts that the big cable triumvirate is in violation
of the patent, though a spokesperson for Comcast did note they
had not been served with a complaint just yet. Sadly (or not-so-
sadly, depending on perspective) we can't take part in the gavel
swinging, bu