Broadcom bags Cirrus storage patents
PrintOne less avenue for sueing
Posted in Storage, 12th February 2004 10:37 GMT
Free whitepaper – Reliability analysis of the APC Symmetra MW Power System
Broadcom is stumping up $18m cash for a clutch of magnetic and optical storage patents held by Cirrus Logic.
The comms chip maker now owns intellectual property over certain read channel and other hard disk controller technologies. And err, that's about it, except for a canned quote, which you can read here.
Cirrus, the niche designer of DSP chips, doesn't exactly need the dough. Last quarter it ended with $180m in the bank. And it expects to close its current quarter with $194m-$198m. But the company shows that owning intellectual property pays. Especially when you are prepared to sue: Cirrus is currently locking horns with Wolfson, the Scottish audio chips designer, filing suit over alleged patent infringement.
Wolfson is vigorously defending itself, on the grounds that Cirrus knows the patents in question are invalid. It is sueing Cirrus for "improperly interfering with its Initial Public Offer on the London Stock Exchange and with its customers".
Cirrus last year settled several patent infringement lawsuits, gaining $9m from ATI, $7m from Nvidia and $45m from Western Digital. ®
Free whitepaper – Fundamental Principles of Generators for Information Technology
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
What Exchange can't do - and Dell can
Seven ways to optimize VMware server virtualization
Dell PowerEdge R710 solution with VMware ESX vs. Dell PowerEdge 2850 solution
Enabling The Agile Data Center
OpenOffice.org pushes gamers' buttons with OOMouse
Big Iron, big data, big networks, big problems
Spectra launches T-Finity, plans beyond
HP scores SMB storage hat-trick