Patriot Scientific, TPL End MPU Patent Litigation with Cross-Licensing

Online staff -- Electronic News, 6/7/2005

Intellectual properties players Patriot Scientific and The TPL Group today said they have agreed to end the litigation against each other by unifying their interests in 10 key microprocessor patents originally filed in 1989 and granted in 1998.

Under the terms of their agreement, TPL is granted full responsibility and authority for the commercialization and licensing of the unified patents portfolio, resolving years of litigation between the companies over title to the patents.

Through this agreement, the companies hope to speed the licensing of fundamental microprocessor patents.

Previously, each corporation had licensed these core technology patents separately and earlier this year Patriot had successfully licensed this core technology to AMD (http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA505841).

Under terms of today’s deal, Patriot and TPL will receive certain payments in addition to sharing in future revenues generated by a licensing program exclusively implemented by TPL. Specific financial details were not disclosed.

The patent portfolio of subject is believed to contain core building blocks for today’s microprocessor implementation and architecture.

TPL and Patriot believe at least three of the 10 patents are elemental to virtually every microprocessor design, which are titled, “Clocking CPU and I/O Separately,” “Use of Multiple Cores and Embedded Memory,” and “Multiple Instruction Fetch.”

Patriot retains rights to make and market array microprocessor products and technologies under its current Ignite and Inflame brands, as well as a range of other products and technologies not utilizing the patents covered by this new agreement.

TPL group chairman Dan Leckrone reaffirmed his company’s longstanding philosophy to encourage cooperation instead of litigation.

“Since TPL began managing intellectual property more than 15 years ago, our business strategy has always been driven by relationship building and constructive cooperation,” he said in a statement. “Our agreement with Patriot Scientific is a good example of this strategy at work."

Finally, TPL said the licensing program for the patents will be managed by Alliacense, a core group of senior TPL Group executives directly responsible for the development and commercialization of the company's patent portfolios.