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To: Paul Engel who wrote (86079)	7/23/1999 2:12:00 AM
From: Paul Engel	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Intel Investors - Looks Like Intel Isn't the only Company suing VIA ! Trident - VIA's graphics design partner - is going to sue VIA as well ! Paul {===========================} Trident announces plans to sue Via By Mark Hachman , Electronic Buyers' News Jul 22, 1999 (2:05 PM) URL: ebnews.com SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Graphics chip maker Trident Microsystems Inc. said it will sue its design partner, Via Technologies Inc., and charge the Taiwan-based chip set maker with breach of contract, fraud and patent infringement. Trident's suit, which was announced by the company today (July 22) but will be officially filed tomorrow in a U.S. federal court, charges Via with breaking a carefully orchestrated marketing arrangement that existed for the companies' jointly-designed products. It also charges Via with illegally luring away 25 Trident engineers to its own design team. Representatives at Via's U.S headquarters in Fremont, Calif., said they were aware of Trident's suit but had not yet formulated a response. Trident executives said the company had a deal with Via under which Trident integrated its CyberBlade graphics core into two of Via's core logic chip sets — the MVP4 and ProMedia. Under the agreement, Via was to market the MVP4 and ProMedia chip sets to desktop PC customers. Trident, meanwhile, which sells most of its graphics ICs into the portable computing market, was granted access to Via's core-logic technology and designed its own CyberBlade i7 and i1 parts for notebook PC OEMs. "We believe Via violated that fundamental market direction," said Gerry Liu, senior vice president of marketing for Trident (Santa Clara, Calif.). Liu said the Via agreement has led to "complaints and confusion" on the part of Trident's customers, who are unsure from which company they are supposed to buy their chip sets. Liu also said Via violated a separate agreement under which the companies were supposed to share revenue and profits from the sale of the chip sets. And, he added, law enforcement agencies in Taiwan have searched offices at Via used by the former Trident employees looking for documents that may prove Via used illegal hiring practices. In its suit, Trident is seeking to halt the sale of Via's MVP4 and ProMedia chip sets, and will ask for $200 million in punitive damages plus an unspecified amount of actual damages. The litigation shows a crack in the façade of a block of companies whose common goal was to provide an alternative to Intel Corp.'s architecture — a group whose principal members include Via, Trident, Acer Laboratories Inc., and National Semiconductor Corp. Via is already dealing with a suit filed by Intel, which charges Via with breaking the P6 bus license agreement it signed with Intel. Via is having its P6-based chip sets manufactured by National Semiconductor, and maintains that it is covered by a separate licensing agreement National has with Intel. Earlier this month Via purchased National's discrete microprocessor subsidiary, Cyrix Corp., which has been one of Intel's chief rivals. Via also has signed separate deals with S3 Inc. and Trident to integrate their graphics chips into its chip sets. In advance of its announcement of plans to file a suit against Via, Trident said Wednesday that it has signed a deal with Acer Labs, a rival of Via's. The flurry of licensing deals is indicative of a trend among chip set makers to seek out partners in the graphics industry with whom to develop integrated products. This phenomenon is being driven by the popularity of low-cost PCs, which have forced chip suppliers to develop integrated parts to lower their bill-of-materials cost. With the exception of 3Dfx Interactive Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), every mainstream PC graphics chip company has signed a deal to integrate its cores into a third party's core-logic chip set.