Tessera Technologies struck a significant victory recently in a legal battle against Broadcom Ltd (NASDAQ:AVGO) over patent infringement.
Tessera confirmed the details about the case yesterday, revealing that the presiding Administrative Law Judge Sandra Dee Lord handed out an initial determination notice on June 30. Tessera’s legal representatives have already received the full ID and the wide scope of the legal victory has been confirmed. The victory was against Broadcom and some of its clients in the U.S. International Trade Commission (ICT). Broadcom violated the patent through a wide range of its products.
“We are very pleased with this result, which our counsel has confirmed is a complete victory on 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,” stated Tessera CEO, Jon Kirchner.
The ‘946 patent covers a technique that is used to smooth the planes of semiconductor chips. Errors can occur due to microscopic errors in the circuitry packed across those planes as the semiconductors get smaller. Some of the Broadcom products that violated the patent are in one of the seven technology nodes: 16nm, 20nm, 28nm, 45/40nm, 65/60/55nm, 90nm, and 130nm. The ITC investigation has been covering three Tessera patents but most of the Broadcom products fall under the ‘946 Patent.
The new announcement also happens to be the second time that the investigations have confirmed the valid nature of the ‘946 patent in the last four months. The first time happened when Broadcom was denied a petition for Inter Partes Review by the Patent Trial and Appeals Board in March. Tessera’s parent company Xperi Corporation (NASDAQ:XPER) has also obtained an injunction from a German court regarding a related patent.
Broadcom told a German judge presiding over the case that it would suffer huge losses if the German injunction was executed. The company also asked that Xperi should be ordered to post a 500 million Euro bond as it tried to seek an appeal.
Broadcom stock closed the latest trading session on Tuesday at $231.61.
