PMBus for OEMs get boost from TI’s licensing of Power-One patents

June 22, 2009

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.

PMBus 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.

Posted by Margery Conner on June 22, 2009 | Comments (4)

July 2, 2009

In response to: PMBus for OEMs get boost from TI’s licensing of Power-One patents
Forncett commented:

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?

July 1, 2009

In response to: PMBus for OEMs get boost from TI’s licensing of Power-One patents
DS commented:

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.....

June 30, 2009

In response to: PMBus for OEMs get boost from TI’s licensing of Power-One patents
Patrick de France commented:

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.

June 22, 2009

In response to: PMBus for OEMs get boost from TI’s licensing of Power-One patents
Ron commented:

That is big news. eom

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