By Jacqueline Bell

Law360, New York (August 08, 2011, 1:47 PM ET) -- Patent-holding company Powerline Innovations LLC filed two lawsuits Saturday in Texas accusing more than 20 companies, including Cisco Systems Inc., Sharp Corp. and Qualcomm Inc., of infringing a patent covering digital home networking technologies.

The paired suits both assert U.S. Patent Number 5,471,190, which describes technology that allocates resources in a communication network. The patent was obtained by Powerline less than a month ago from Cyberlynx Gateway Corp., according to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

One suit, which targets companies including Qualcomm, Broadcom Corp., CopperGate...