Emulex coughs up $58m in Broadcom fibre optic patents clash
Don't put that chequebook away just yet
Posted in Business, 9th July 2012 09:44 GMT
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Emulex is paying Broadcom $58m to partially settle patent infringement claims.
Broadcom makes (among many, many things) Ethernet gear and attempted to sue Emulex for infringing 10 of its its patents in 2009. The 2009 suit came just months after Emulex rejected a second takeover bid from Broadcom.
With this settlement, three of the 10 disputed patents are now licensed by Emulex:
Emulex ... receives a license to Broadcom U.S. Patents Nos. 7,471,691; 7,058,150; 6,424,194 and related families for certain fields of use including Fibre Channel applications. The fields of use licensed to Emulex are related, in part, to the Emulex XE201 (Lancer) ASICs, that are capable of Fibre Channel and Ethernet, 16Gbit/s Fibre Channel HBAs, Fibre Channel SOCs and other FC products.
The rest of the lawsuit carries on. We'd guess more millions are going to pass from Emulex to Broadcom before it is over. Broadcom might even recover all its Emulex takeover bid costs at this rate.
Fibre Channel over Ethernet has not yet taken off but may still do so. Emulex is back making profits with revenues of $128.7m and $125.7m in the past two quarters after losses in the six preceding quarters. It must be heartily sick of this Broadcom business and looking forward to its end. ®
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