Canadian outfit Wi-Lan has sued major computer makers, accusing 19 top companies of infringing on a patent by selling laptops and cellular handsets with Bluetooth technology enabled.

Wi-Lan has sued Apple, Dell, HP, and Intel, so it is not thinking small. While Wi-Lan, based in Ottawa, isn’t likely to win an injunction, it might use the court case to force small payments from a lot of companies who are not interested in a messy court case. The Wi-Lan argues the sued companies violated US Patent No 5,515,369 by making and/or selling various products enabled with Bluetooth technology including cellular handsets and personal notebook computers.

According to the website of the US patent office the patent was granted in 1996 and assigned to Metricom of California. It specifies a method of method for frequency sharing and frequency punchout in frequency hopping communications network. The method enables each node in a multimode network to specify a random channel hopping sequence that it will use to for data transfer and a means by which it can communicate that sequence ot other nodes in the network.