Peter Clarke

EE Times

(06/07/2005 9:01 AM EDT)

LONDON — Processor and processor patent company Patriot Scientific Corp. has agreed to unify its interests in certain patents, originally filed in 1989 and granted in 1998, with those of TPL Group, settling litigation between the two companies.

The TPL Group (Cupertino, Calif.) has been granted full responsibility and authority for the commercialization and licensing of a unified portfolio of ten patents. This ends years of litigation between Patriot Scientific (San Diego, Calif.) and The TPL Group over title to certain patents, Patriot Scientific said Tuesday (June 7).

Patriot Scientific has been pursuing multiple semiconductor and computer companies claiming that its patent portfolio covers technologies essential to modern processor design. Patriot has said it has sent letters notifying more than 150 companies of potential infringement of its microprocessor patents. Patriot previously announced lawsuits filed against Sony, Fujitsu, Toshiba, NEC, and Matsushita. It has also traded suits with Intel Corp. and is seeking damages in excess of several hundred millions of dollars.

Leading processor maker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced it had purchased restricted shares in Patriot Scientific and licensed the company`s intellectual property (IP) portfolio in February 2005.

Under the terms of the agreement with TPL Group, Patriot Scientific and TPL will receive certain payments in addition to sharing in future revenues generated by a licensing program exclusively implemented by TPL. Patriot said it believes at least three of the ten patents are ``elemental`` to virtually every microprocessor design. Patriot said the three most significant of these patents are: U.S. patent 5,809,336, which covers the separate clocking of CPU and I/O; U.S. patent 6,598,148, which covers the use of multiple cores and embedded memory; and U.S. patent 5,784,584, which covers fetching multiple instructions.

``This agreement replaces costly ongoing litigation with a win-win scenario that supports our efforts to license and protect our company`s intellectual property on a broader scale,`` said Jeff Wallin, president and CEO of Patriot Scientific, in a statement. ``The TPL Group is well-positioned to aggressively license these core technology patents, freeing Patriot Scientific to focus on our equally innovative Ignite and Inflame array microprocessor core technologies, as well as other innovations currently in our development pipeline.``