Peter Clarke

EE Times

(07/26/2006 12:42 PM EDT)

LONDON — Memory IP vendor Mosaid Technologies Inc. announced Wednesday (July 26) that it has initiated litigation in the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, against Micron Technology Inc. of the United States and Powerchip Semiconductor Corp. and ProMOS Technologies Inc. of Taiwan.

Mosaid (Ottawa, Canada) alleged that Micron, Powerchip and ProMOS infringe nine of its U.S. patents: namely U.S. Patent Nos. 6,657,919, 6,992,950, 5,751,643, 5,822,253, 6,278,640, 6,603,703, 7,038,937, 5,828,620 and 6,980,448.

On Tuesday (July 25) Micron said it was seeking a declaratory judgment in the Northern District of California, San Jose Division, that 14 of Mosaid`s U.S. patents are invalid, but Micron did not comment on whether it was being sued by Mosaid (see July 25 story).

Mosaid, which as an intellectual property company depends on the enforcement of its patents, has recently resolved a long-running patent dispute with Infineon Technologies AG (Munich, Germany). This resulted in Infineon and Qimonda AG (Munich, Germany), a newly formed memory company, taking licenses for Mosaid intellectual property (see June 14 story).

Mosaid is represented by Howrey LLP, a U.S. firm specializing in patent litigation.