One of the industry's early pioneers in the mobile Internet is pursuing "strategic alternatives," or a possible sale, of its mediation and messaging products business.

Openwave Systems says the move is designed to focus the company on its intellectual property initiative and drive long-term profitability. The company has retained Jeffries & Company as its exclusive financial advisor.

The move may come as no surprise given the company's history. The company, which began inventing mobile Internet technologies in the mid-1990s under earlier iterations like Unwired Planet and Phone.com, has been through a lot of changes. But it has admitted that it didn't fully capitalize on all those early inventions and has since been on a path to rectify that.

In August, the company filed complaints against Apple and Research In Motion (RIM) in an effort to protect its intellectual property on how mobile devices connect to the Internet. Openwave says it was the first in 1997 to enable operators to deploy mobile Internet browsing. It owns about 200 patents, which Microsoft agreed to license from Openwave last fall.

"We have made significant investments in our products over the past several years," said Openwave CEO Mike Mulica in today's press release. "We believe our strategy will enable us to derive the maximum value from our innovative and market-leading messaging and mediation product lines ... Moving forward, we are focusing our efforts on a multi-pronged strategy to realize the value of Openwave's patents that are foundational to the mobile internet."

Mulica joined the company as CEO in October, replacing Ken Denman, who resigned for personal reasons in September. Prior to Openwave, Mulica was president and head of Strategy and Corporate Development at Synchronoss.

Openwave announced a restructuring in August that included an 18 to 20 percent reduction in its workforce.

Purple Labs acquired Openwave's mobile phone software business back in 2008.