Technical Editor Margery Conner's PowerSource streams the latest developments in electronic power design and related technologies. Follow Margery on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/margeryc.
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Blog
Monday, June 22, 2009
PMBus for OEMs get boost from TI’s licensing of Power-One patents
Jun 22 2009 9:24AM | Permalink |Comments (6) |
Big news on the PMBus front: TI has announced that they’ve signed a license agreement for Power-One’s digital power technology patents. Note that TI is licensing the patents on digital power control technology including the configuring, control and monitoring of power systems – TI is not licensing Power-One’s control bus itself. Also, the license will extend only to OEMs using TI power control chips as point-of-load controllers; It will not extend to merchant power supply manufacturers using TI parts. TI says that it doesn’t want to make decisions for its customers in the merchant power supply space. (Keep in mind that Power-One a major player in that space.) The license also extends to TI power modules.
What does this mean for the POL design community? Any OEM customers who were hanging back from committing to the PMBus for digital power control and management because of fears of being tied up in litigation can now implement the PMBus in their POL designs with no fears of a lawsuit and at no additional cost: TI says that the price of all of their PMBus parts will remain the same. And the fear of litigation has been a very real roadblock on the path to acceptance for the bus.
Related entries in: Power Sources/Controllers | Power Supplies |
Reader Comments
at 6/22/2009 9:58:21 AM, Ron said:
That is big news.
eom
at 6/22/2009 3:03:13 PM, John England, Linear Patent Counsel said:
Linear Technology was the first to take a license on this technology from PowerOne some months ago. TI is the late comer to this field of use, and have to take the license now, lately, to stay competitive. The author of this article is only partially informed, and hence only partially correct. Linear solved this issue months ago for analog customers.
at 6/30/2009 11:14:58 PM, Patrick de France said:
Sorry to disapoint you John but, the first to take a license was Silicon Labs in July 2006, which for sure closed a litigation process but was the FIRST. LT was the second, followed by Primarion/Infineon and then TI. You are correct, the author might not know all details and PMBus is not limited to point-of-load. A lot of power applications, not POL related, have adopted PMBus and many more will follow.
at 7/1/2009 10:37:14 AM, DS said:
This is yet another sad day in the history of using IP in a negative way. I'd hoped the industry would stand up to P1 on this. Now looks like the inventors of I2C have to go beg & probably pay P1 to use it in PoL apps. Yet another example to show that the US patent system is broken: the combination of prior art + prior art does not equal novelty. Sigh.....
at 7/2/2009 3:02:36 AM, Forncett said:
Of the many restrictive patents that EDN has highlighted & that stifle the industry's growth, this one surely takes some beating. How anyone could think that PowerOne would get away with patenting something that's so patently obvious while the rest of us have been programming chips and entire subsystems using various serial busses for time immemorial is a mystery to me...or have I missed something here?
at 7/9/2009 11:43:15 PM, David Doubght said:
It is very unfortunate that Power Industry is giving such bad example of US Patent system made to protect money makers and not the inventors. As said by DS, patenting prior art over prior art is not novelty, it's only a way to make money while slowing down innovation. Fortunately other industries found their way to escape this unfair business model. Good luck to US Patent Reform (which however might never happen.)
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