U.S. Patent 8014423 was awarded to SMSC Holdings S.à.r.l on 2011-09-06 and describes a “Reference time distribution over a network.” This patent has been cited 289 times by other U.S. patents which places it in the top 500 cited patents since 2010 according to our law firm research, and makes it of the most innovative digital communication patents in the field of electrical engineering. The abstract states:

A reference time distribution system and method use a data transmission network having a plurality of nodes to distribute the House Sync signal. A network-wide time signal is generated using a reference time generator, and the network-wide time signal is then distributed over the network to the plurality of nodes. At each node, the network-wide time signal is converted to a local synchronization signal for use in performing synchronization of the timing of each node. Either network-inherent timing and/or additional time signaling is used to provide the nodes attached to this network with a network-wide notion of time. The time information is converted locally into synchronization signals or time information as required by a respective application. When data is transported over the network, delay compensation is performed to simultaneously output different data streams that have been synchronously input into the network, regardless of the data path. Link: U.S. Patent 8014423

This patent was originally filed on 2001-02-16 which gives it a processing time of 3854 days, compared to an average processing time of 1880 in the field. SMSC Holdings S.à.r.l has 58 total patents. The first named inventor is Eric A. Roth of Seoul, . The primary examiner was Ronald Abelson.

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