by David Manners

Bertrand Cambou, CEO of Spansion, reckons he will be able to establish a major licensing business in flash memory technology.

The first steps towards doing that are today’s legal actions in the International Trade Commission (ITC) and the US District Court in Delaware, against Samsung asserting that the Korean company is in breach of Spansion patents.

Asked why he thought he would have any more success than Rambus in extracting royalties from memory companies, Cambou replied: “I think the issue is that Spansion is a memory company, it’s not just writing IPs in the corner. We have all the basic intellectual property (IP) for NAND floating gate which is what Samsung is doing. Samsung is now citing its own inventions as prior art.”

Isn’t it going to be difficult trying to get royalties from such an unprofitable sector as flash memory? “Samsung say their NAND business is very profitable,” replied Cambou.
why it is seen as necessary to litigate, Cambou replied: “We have tried to talk to them. They have no interest in talking to us in a friendly way. Twelve months ago we were talking to them about charge-trapping technology because floating point is not lasting forever, and we said: ‘We can help you go to charge trapping’. Samsung said they didn’t want to talk about licensing.”

The patents all came to Spansion from AMD which, with Fujitsu, formed Spansion as a joint venture comprising the two companies’ flash manufacturing operations. The AMD patents ‘on average’ expire in 2020. “We’re asking for six years compensation for the last six years,” said Cambou, “take your number - $200m a year, $300m a year, it comes to a big sum.”

Isn’t it counter-productive to cite in its lawsuit customers or potential customers of Spansion such as Apple, Sony RIM, Asus, and Sony-Ericsson? “We deeply regret that they have to be cited," responded Cambou, “all of them will be unhappy that they are on the list. We will do all we can to make sure they are not affected.”

Cambou is hoping for a quick resolution of the dispute when Samsung realises it has no option but to settle. “ITC can make a decision in nine months,” said Cambou, “we estimate the worst case will be 16 months. The quality and strength of our patents should make it much faster. Our patents are so powerful, and so basic, they’ll realise that at the end of the day they will come to an agreement. It puts tremendous pressure on Samsung.”

What is Spansion hoping to achieve with this lawsuit? “Our ultimate objective is two-fold we want to establish a licensing business,” replied Cambou, “we are one of the flash pioneers in floating gate and, with charge-trapping coming, we want to be a major licensing house.”