Key Tessera Patent Infringed across Broadcom Product Lines
Business WireJuly 5, 2017
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--
Tessera Technologies, Inc. and certain of its subsidiaries (collectively, “Tessera,” a subsidiary of Xperi Corporation (XPER) (the “Company”)), confirmed more details today on its significant win against Broadcom Corporation (“Broadcom”) and certain of its customers in the U.S. International Trade Commission (“ITC”). Administrative Law Judge (“ALJ”) Sandra Dee Lord issued a notice of initial determination (“ID”) on June 30, 2017, and the Company’s counsel has now received the full ID and confirmed the broad scope of Tessera’s victory.
“We are very pleased with this result, which our counsel has confirmed is a complete victory on the ‘946 Patent,” said Jon Kirchner, the Company’s CEO, referring to U.S. Patent No. 6,849,946 (the “‘946 Patent”). “The ALJ found that the ‘946 Patent is infringed, valid, and has a domestic industry in the United States. This is a key patent on a fundamental manufacturing process technology that is not only very broadly infringed across all of Broadcom’s significant product lines, but, we believe, is used by many others in the semiconductor industry.”
The infringing Broadcom products are semiconductor chips that fall into one of seven technology nodes: 16nm, 20nm, 28nm, 45/40nm, 65/60/55nm, 90nm, and 130nm. The ‘946 Patent covers the largest number of Broadcom products of all three patents at issue in the ITC investigation.
This is the second time that the ‘946 Patent’s validity has been confirmed in the past four months – first by the Patent Trial and Appeals Board when it denied Broadcom’s petition for Inter Partes Review (“IPR”) in March, and now by the ITC. This patent is also at issue in the Company’s parallel lawsuits against Broadcom and Avago in Delaware federal district court, where the Company is seeking damages.
The ALJ also recommended that the ITC issue its standard remedies that would bar Broadcom and its customers Arista Networks, ARRIS/Pace, ASUSTeK/ASUS, Comcast Cable, HTC, NETGEAR, and Technicolor from importing, selling, and engaging in a variety of related domestic activity in connection with infringing imported products. The infringing products include a very wide array of Broadcom chips and the products that incorporate them, such as set-top boxes, routers, modems, gateways, cell phones and other mobile devices, as well as Ethernet switches and other chips designed for data centers, enterprises, and cloud computing servers. The case is now subject to review by the ITC Commissioners.
“We are also pleased by the ALJ’s ruling that the ‘136 Patent is infringed and valid,” Kirchner added, referring to U.S. Patent No. 6,133,136 (the “‘136 Patent”). “This is the second time this patented technology has been found to be infringed by Broadcom – first by a court in Germany and now by the ITC. And now the validity of the patent has also been confirmed. Although the ALJ found that the ‘136 lacked a domestic industry, that is a special requirement unique to the ITC that does not apply in federal district court or in Europe, where the Company has parallel cases against Broadcom.”
“Broadcom has now been found to infringe multiple patents in multiple jurisdictions – two of our U.S. patents and one of our E.U. patents. The ITC decision is our third major favorable decision against Broadcom in the past four months, along with the German infringement ruling and the IPR decision on the ‘946 Patent. We remain interested in negotiating a fair and reasonable license with Broadcom, but absent a satisfactory resolution, we will continue to defend our IP rights and enforce these decisions to the fullest extent of the law,” Kirchner concluded.
About Xperi Corporation's Semiconductor and IP Licensing Business
Tessera and Invensas are subsidiaries of Xperi Corporation. Over the past 27 years, research and development at both Tessera and Invensas has led to significant innovations in semiconductor packaging technology, which has been widely licensed and is found in billions of electronic devices globally. Invensas develops next-generation semiconductor packaging and interconnect technologies for memory, mobile, computing and automotive applications. Through collaborative partnerships with world-class manufacturing companies and high-volume equipment and materials suppliers, Invensas licenses these technology solutions to original equipment manufacturers, original design manufacturers, integrated device manufacturers, fabless device suppliers, foundries and outsourced assembly and test providers, and supports the technology transfer at customer-designated sites. Additionally, Invensas' low temperature wafer bonding technologies target the image sensor, DRAM, MEMS, RF and 2.5D logic markets.
