By | Tony Smith 13th May 2005 10:23

Judge imposes US Renesas chip sales ban

Translogic patent infringed, court rules

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Renesas, Hitachi's spun-off chip business, can no longer sell its SH-3 and SH-4 processor families in the US, a District Court judge has ruled.

Some 18 CPUs are covered by the ban, which also prevents Renesas from even importing the products onto US soil.

The judgement, granted at the behest of Translogic Technology, follows Translogic's patent infringement lawsuit victory against Renesas and Hitachi - which offered the offending products before it separated out its chip business - earlier this month.

The two Japanese companies were found to have violated Translogic's intellectual property rights by incorporating the latter's transmission gate series multiplexer patent. A jury went on to award Translogic $85.6m in damages.

Hitachi maintains that it did not infringe the Translogic patent and will appeal against the District Court judgement. In June 1999, it asked the US Patent and Trademark Office to re-examine Translogic's patent, alleging it was invalid. Translogic claimed Hitachi had been infringing the patent since 1996. ®