Peter Clarke

EE Times

(07/28/2005 8:59 AM EDT)

LONDON — Patent licensing company TPL Group has claimed that Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are among licensees of its broad ranging Moore Microprocessor Patent (MMP) portfolio.

Financial terms of the licensing and details such as which party or parties are set to pay or receive licensing fees or royalties were not disclosed.

TPL Group (Cupertino, Calif.), which recently merged its microprocessor patent interests with those of Patriot Scientific Corp. (San Diego), have formed a subsidiary called Alliacense to handle licensing program management. Patriot had previously signed AMD as a licensee to its patent portfolio.

The Alliacense MMP portfolio is named after inventor Charles H. Moore, chief technology officer of TPL Group, who is known for inventing the Forth software programming language and for his work in the 1980s on stack-based microprocessors.

With Intel and AMD as licensees, Alliacense said it is now stepping up efforts to license more than 100 system manufacturers worldwide who it contends are using intellectual property protected by the MMP Portfolio. The patents, filed in the 1980s, cover techniques used in microprocessors as well as DSPs, embedded processors and system-on-chip solutions, Alliacense said.

“Licensing a few big names in the early days of a licensing program is a common strategy that establishes credibility and generates momentum for ensuing licensing efforts,” Mac Leckrone, Alliacense president and COO, said in a statement.

Alliacense alleges that many computer, communications and consumer electronics devices infringe the MMP portfolio in multiple instances — with as many as 10 or 20 individual embedded processors — but that Alliacense was prepared to provide single license to cover systems.

“Clearly, the most attractive path for OEMs is to acquire a single, inexpensive license that covers an entire system,” Leckrone added.

Alliacense said it has appointed U.S., Asian and European representatives to discuss licensing of the MMP portfolio. The licensing scheme is structured so that favorable opportunities exist for the first OEMs to purchase a license, Leckrone said, adding that Alliacense is in discussions with major international OEMs

Alliacense claimed that the three most widely recognized patents in the MMP Portfolio cover: the use of separate CPU and I/O clocks; multiple instruction fetches on a clock cycle; and the use of on-chip oscillators and embedded memory. The MMP Portfolio includes U.S., European and Japanese patents and is protected through 2015, Alliacense said.