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Technology Stocks : Rambus (RMBS) - Eagle or Penguin -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (40532)	4/20/2000 9:57:00 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

O.T. Via settles lawsuit with chip partner Trident By James Niccolai VIA TECHNOLOGIES HAS agreed to pay Trident Microsystems $10.17 million as part of an agreement that settles a lawsuit Trident filed against the Taiwanese chip vendor last year. Via and Trident have worked closely for more than two years to co-develop and market integrated graphics and core logic chips that are used in desktop and notebook PCs from top PC makers, including Compaq Computer. Even as they continued to work together, Trident sued Via in a U.S. District Court last July, accusing the company of breach of contract, fraud, patent infringement, and other offenses. Trident asked the court for $200 million in punitive damages as well as unspecified actual damages. In a joint statement issued Thursday, the companies said they have agreed to settle their differences in order to focus on serving their mutual customers and to avoid the cost and distractions of a lengthy lawsuit. Under the terms of the agreement, Via will pay Trident $10.17 million for a desktop-software driver license fee. For Via the settlement is not the end of its legal troubles. The company still faces at least three lawsuits filed against it by Intel, which has accused the Taiwanese firm of selling chipsets that infringe on Intel's technology patents. Via has denied those charges. In January, Intel asked the U.S. International Trade Commission to weigh in on the matter by asking the agency to bar Via from importing its chipsets to the United States. The ITC agreed has agreed to investigate the matter, and the two sides are in a discovery phase, a Via spokesman in the United States confirmed Thursday. Trident Microsystems Inc. is at www.trid.com. Via Technologies Inc., in Taipei, Taiwan, is at www.via.com.tw. James Niccolai is a San Francisco-based senior correspondent for the IDG News Service, an InfoWorld affiliate.

To: mishedlo who wrote (40532)	4/20/2000 11:35:00 PM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Mishedlo, I think that you will find that the HP and RMBS patents are in "diametric opposition", in that HP has claim on "absolute clocking" while RMBS has claims on "differential clocking". The examiner did not simply miss the HP patent, it was before him as prior art in the examination of the RMBS patent. By the way, time of filing is not the "priority date", if one can prove unequivocally, that a patent (with a later filing date) was invented prior to the invention of the patent with the prior filing, it could be enough by itself. I think that Hitachi strategy, however is going to be to show that RMBS was in the public domain (at least 12 months)before the filing of the first patent, that is why the industry is busy reviewing all record books within their organizations to find such material that predate the RMBS patents. Zeev