AMD licenses chip tech, lawsuit dropped

AMD last week acquired a series of technology licences that grant it the right to use patents it was sued for allegedly infringing back in May.

The financial terms underpinning the deal were not made public. The agreement was reached with the patents' owner, Computer Cache Coherency Corp., a subsidiary of technology holding company Acacia Research. As the litigant's name suggests, the patents cover memory cache coherence.

"By synchronising main memory and main cache memory," the company claims of its patented technique, "the technology enables different memories to communicate and synchronise with each other, allowing peripheral devices to operate at faster speeds."

The deal involves the dissolution of a lawsuit brought in the US District Court of Northern California by the Acacia subsidiary last May. Intel was also sued at that time - both chip makers' names were added to an existing complaint made in December 2004 against VIA. All three companies offer system logic components that incorporate its technology, Acacia claimed in May.

The cases against Via and Intel are still pending.

Acacia also said last week that AMD has entered into a licensing agreement with another of its subsidiaries, VData. The license gives the chip company access to multi-dimensional bar-code technology and puts an end to a patent infringement suit brought before the US District Court of Minnesota.

In February this year, AMD licensed a series of technologies which holding company Patriot Scientific claims ownership, backing it up with an investment in the company. Patriot is currently pursuing legal action against Intel and 149 of its customers for allegedly violating its intellectual property ownership rights. ®