Khyber Technologies Corporation (Khyber) was founded in 1991 by Rajendra (Raj) Kumar. Previously, Raj had led the creation of trendsetting handheld computers for the barcode industry at Telxon Corp (TLXN, now owned by Motorola Solutions). He took that previous experience and applied it at Khyber to invent new form-and-functions of PDAs, smartphones, and tablets, creating a widely licensed patent portfolio in the mobile industry.
An estimated over 100 million mobile products have been licensed under various Khyber patents, directly and indirectly. Khyber’s licensees and customers include Hewlett Packard, Casio, UPS, IBM, Danger Inc, Symbol Technologies (SBL, now owned by Motorola Solutions), Telxon (TLXN, now owned by Motorola Solutions), PSC Inc (now owned by Honeywell), Socket Communications (SCKT), and Intellectual Ventures LLC. Some Khyber in the news links:
Google set to face Intellectual Ventures in landmark patent trial. Link
Khyber’s Docking Display featured in Forbes: Link
Khyber News 2000 Link
Raj Kumar: Graduated with a BSEE from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) 1969. Graduate studies at Lamar University, Beaumont, Texas. 1970
- 1971-74 (Electronic Labs): Hardware/software design in Intel 8008-based pioneering projects.
- 1975-80 (TRW etc): Intel and Motorola microprocessor-based hardware/software designs.
- 1981-84 (Telxon Corp): Pioneered trendsetting products by ‘copying’ from consumer electronics into AutoID, thereby disruptively reducing the size and cost and increasing performance of handheld computers for enterprise applications.
- 1985-86 (Telxon): For the product Raj had developed, he orchestrated outsourcing its manufacturing to Asia — a pioneering move almost a decade before it became common practice.
- 1985-1990 (Telxon): Lead the creation of a family of handheld computers for enterprise, based on Intel the PC architecture, again an AutoID industry first.
- 1991-2000 (Khyber): Lead a team of 12 engineers to develop products for barcodes and RFID, specific to clients needs, prototypes as well as outsourced production units.
- 2000-05 (Khyber): Transformed into an IP company, creating and licensing its own patents.
- 2006-Present (Khyber): Liquidating patents that find buyers, and completing prosecution of pending patents. Creating revenue through licensing and profit sharing from some patents.
- 2010: Raj bought out all the investors in the company. Design of certain products related to the patents have been created. Raj wants to sell all of Khyber’s IP and just retain an option to provide advisory work — exclusively to one or two noncompeting buyers — towards successful development of related products.