Ericsson has completed its acquisition of substantially all of Nortel’s CDMA business and LTE assets in North America.

The acquisition includes the transfer of important CDMA contracts with North American operators including Verizon, Sprint, US Cellular, Bell Canada, Telus and Leap, as well as LTE assets, certain patents and patent licences relating to CDMA and LTE.

The former Nortel staff will be integrated into the Ericsson group over the coming months and the entity will work under the Ericsson brand.

In terms of sales, North America will now be Ericsson’s largest region.

In addition to the people Ericsson gains through the combination, the company also hopes to benefit from knowledge of Nortel’s CDMA customers and their networks.

Microsoft and Melco Holdings have entered into an agreement that will provide Melco Group’s customers with patent coverage for their use of technologies running Linux and other related open source software.

Specifically, the patent covenants apply to Buffalo-branded Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, which run Linux, and Buffalo-branded routers, which also run Linux.

Although the contents of the agreement have not been disclosed, the parties indicate that the only financial consideration in this agreement is royalties paid by Melco Group to Microsoft.

Austriamicrosystems, a designer and manufacturer of analog ICs for communications, industrial, medical and automotive applications, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit regarding magnetic encoder products against Melexis (Belgium) and its German subsidiary Melexis GmbH, at the District Court (Landgericht) in Duesseldorf, Germany.

In its complaint Austriamicrosystems asserts that the sale and distribution of products from Melexis’ product family of magnetic encoders in Germany infringes European Patent EP 0 916 074 B1.

The complaint seeks unspecified damages and a court ordered injunction against future infringement by Melexis.

Microsoft and Brother Industries have signed a patent cross-licensing agreement to allow access to each company’s respective patent portfolio.

The agreement encompasses a range of patents and is expected to further each company’s research and development (R&D) efforts.

Through this agreement, Brother Industries will gain access to Microsoft’s patents for Brother’s current and future product lines, including multifunction products (MFPs), printers and certain Linux-based embedded devices.

Microsoft will gain access to Brother’s patents for Microsoft’s current and future product lines, including Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Office and other IT product lines. Although the contents of the agreement have not been disclosed, the parties indicated that Microsoft is being compensated by Brother.