Richtek Sues AMD, Sapphire, and Others over Alleged Patent Infringement
Richtek Sues AMD, Sapphire, and Others over Alleged Patent Infringement
Posted 12/31/2009 at 12:45pm
| by Paul Lilly
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Taiwanese chip designer Richtek Technology said Wednesday it has filed a patent infringement complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) against several companies, including uPI Semiconductor, AMD, Sapphire Technology, Diamond Multimedia, and XFX.
Richtek claims the aforementioned graphic chip makers have infringed on three of the company's technology patents, as well as misusing business secrets. According to Fudzilla, the three patents deal with technologies for a Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) circuit, a method for current balance in a mulit-phase DC-to-DC converter to produce a respective PWM signal to regulate the corresponding channel current, and for a power metal oxide semiconductor transistor layout comprised of a gate electrode with a lattice pattern on a substrate having a first area and a second area.
Richtek is seeking an injunction and compensation, but the company didn't say for how much.
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QUINTIX256
December 31, 2009 at 1:13pm
These people order PWM chips from third parties, like Anpec. Go ahead and do a web search for some of the names of the small chips on the back of your video cards (APW7065 for example.)
I'm sure these third party auxiliary chip manufactures either have the appropriate licenses or they have developed their tech independently. Even if they didn't, these companies are local to Taiwan, so they have absolutely no need to leave there jurisdiction to enforce there patents if they ever so happen to be valid.
It seems as if every day these lawsuits over tech royalties are becoming more obscure and frivolous.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
TechJunkie
December 31, 2009 at 2:01pm
I agree. The one problem I see is that is seems that everyone and anyone can sue for everything and anything at any given time. It's so frivolous anymore that it's not even funny. I'm just waitin for the moment to sue nvidia because it's power managment usage made my electric bill rise 5 bucks a month and it has put a huge strain on my family! LOL!
GIJames
December 31, 2009 at 12:50pm
I knew something like this would happen to XFX after it started hanging around with the wrong crowd...
DOOMHAMMA
December 31, 2009 at 11:22pm
I like that XFX jumped ship, I have one of their 5870's rockin in my case :p Wouldn't want some lame lawsuit to hurt them.
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