Innovatio IP Ventures filed several lawsuits against dozens of entities in recent years, alleging infringement upon patents that it claimed were essential to the 802.11 Wi-Fi standard. Prior to these lawsuits, Innovatio sought royalties from those same listed defendants, reportedly in the amount of $2,500 to $3,000 from each party named.

Innovatio had acquired the patents from Broadcom, Norand and Intermec. Each company submitted letters of assurance to the IEEE promising to license essential patents to the 802.11 standard if reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms were provided. Innovatio then set its sights on several prominent networking equipment manufacturers, including Motorola Solutions, Cisco Systems and NETGEAR. These companies filed a complaint against Innovatio alleging that the company has engaged in a "pattern and scheme" to extort entities through its licensing demands.

According to Bloomberg Law, a federal judge has now set the value of the contested patents essential to the 802.11 standard at $9.56 per chip. Damages were not fixed, as parties agreed to allow the court to determine the royalty rate before proceeding to consider whether the patents were infringed.

"At a minimum, the court's determination that the Wi-Fi chip is the appropriate base to which the RAND rate applies opens the door for Innovatio to potentially license hundreds of millions of units sold by numerous Wi-Fi chi suppliers," according to Mathhew McAndrews, an Innovatio IP attorney.