Little-known Texas MP3 Technologies Ltd. is taking on Apple Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Sandisk Corp. with a patent-infringement lawsuit.

The suit, which came to light over the weekend, was filed on Feb. 16 in Marshall, Texas. The eastern Texas city is fast becoming one of the leading locations of patent infringement lawsuits in the U.S. thanks to speedy trials and juries that more often than not find in favor of the plaintiff.

In the complaint, Texas MP3 Technologies alleges infringement on U.S. patent 7,065,417, which was awarded in June 2006 to multimedia chip-maker SigmaTel Inc. and covers “an MPEG portable sound reproducing system and a method for reproducing sound data compressed using the MPEG method.”

Source: computerworld