Motorola is suing Aruba Networks over patents held by two of the first's subsidiaries which it recently acquired. Symbol Technologies and Wireless Valley Communications hold patents that Motorola alleges Aruba has infringed, seeking an injunction against Aruba Networks' continued distribution in the U.S. of their offending products, as well as damages.

There are four patents at issue: U.S. patent #7,173,922, Multiple Wireless Local Area Networks Occupying Overlapping Physical Spaces, and U.S. patent  #7,172,923, Security In Multiple WLANs, registered earlier this year to Symbol Technologies; also, U.S. patent #6,625,454, Method and System for Designing or Deploying a Communication Network Which Considers Frequency Dependent Effects, and U.S. patent #6,973,622, System and Method for Design, Tracking, Measurement, Prediction and Optimization of Data Communication Networks, belonging to Wireless Valley since as early as 2003.

"Patent litigation is a part of doing business in our industry," Aruba's Chief Executive Officer Dominic Orr said. "We are evaluating the lawsuit and will respond at the appropriate time."

Motorola bought Wireless Valley in Dec 2005 and Symbol in January this year. The lawsuit was filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Delaware, where Aruba is registered. Aruba Networks has almost doubled its market share since last year, taking up the second place in the enterprise wireless networking business. The leader is Cisco with about 2/3 of the market.

Motorola Inc. started as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in 1928 and is now helmed by Edward Zander, CEO and Chairman. Motorola has said in July that it expects its second-quarter sales to be around $8.6 billion, far short of the $9.4 billion, which the company had projected earlier. Motorola’s staff has blamed the slower-than-expected handset sales from Europe and Asia, two important markets for the phone maker.