Intellectual Ventures settles patent lawsuit with Microsemi

Intellectual Ventures' co-founder Nathan Myhrvold

(Credit: Intellectual Ventures)

Patent holding company Intellectual Ventures announced today it had resolved its long-running patent infringement litigation with chip maker Microsemi.

The settlement dispenses with all patent litigation between the two and makes Microsemi a licensee of segments of Intellectual Ventures' massive patent portfolio. Financial terms of the settlement were not revealed.

Microsemi was one of a handful of companies sued for patent infringement in 2010 by Intellectual Ventures, a patent holder co-founded by Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's former chief technology officer. Altera and Lattice Semiconductor, other makers of FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) logic chips, were also accused of infringing up to five patents owned by Intellectual Ventures. Defendants for other lawsuits filed that day included Check Point Software Technologies, McAfee, Symantec, and Trend Micro.

Microsemi is the fifth company in recent months to settle patent litigation with Intellectual Ventures, which says it now controls more than 40,000 intellectual-property assets. It settled a lawsuit with camera-maker Olympus last November. SK Hynix and Elpida settled lawsuits in September... [Read more]