Six months after settling with the FTC on an Ethernet-related patent, Negotiated Data Solutions, or N-Data, is back in the headlines.

Michael Cooney reported in his Layer 8 blog that Intel is suing N-Data to protect Dell. Dell is of course a huge Intel customer, and N-Data has filed a patent claim against Dell.

You see, N-Data holds the rights to several patents - and enforcing patents is its primary business. Some of the patents relate to autonegotiation techniques. Autonegotiation allows different network devices to configure themselves automatically and find a common data rate at which to communicate.

The patents were developed by National Semiconductor, which made a deal with the IEEE in 1994 to collect a small one-time fee from companies using the technology. A few twists and turns later, and N-Data was demanding much larger fees from companies that had been using the technology in products for years.

Back in January, I told you how the FTC reached a settlement with N-Data. The upshot was that companies using the autonegotiation standard would not have to pay the substantial licensing fees that N-Data was seeking.

So, how is it that N-Data is able to go after Dell? Well, according to Bloomberg, the company maintains that it is trying to enforce separate patents that are related not to autonegotiation but instead to USB and High Definition Audio. 

Intel's point of view is that these patents should be included as part of the settlement reached earlier this year, Bloomberg writes. But N-Data says Intel is trying to extend that agreement too far.

The issue will apparently be settled in court, where the only winners will be lawyers. And this is why it is better to go into law than into engineering.

Jeff Caruso is site editor at Network World.