Intergraph
Intergraph sued Intel in August 2001, saying Intel had infringed two of its patents that define key aspects of parallel instruction computing (PIC). PIC technology is used in Intel's Itanium chip, a high-performance chip for high-end server and workstation computing.
On 11th October 2002 a federal judge accepted Intergraph's arguments and found that its patents were "valid and enforceable." He ruled that Itanium infringed on designs embodied in the two patents and in the Clipper processor, formerly used in Intergraph's workstations.
Meantime, however, Intel and Intergraph apparently reached a deal that both settled a previous patent dispute and, reportedly, limited Intel's liability in the current dispute to $250 million, which was to be paid in two stages:
a non-refundable sum of $150 million was to be paid if Intel lost a reconsideration of the 11th October ruling; and
a further $100 million in license fees was to be paid if Intel lost an appeal of that reconsideration. If Intel won on appeal it would pay nothing and licence the technology covered by the patents.
The case was reconsidered in late-October 2002, and the judge followed the earlier ruling. Intel therefore paid $150 million to Intergraph and awaited the appeal.
But things did not go quite according to plan, for while the deal covered Intel, it did not cover Intel's customers. Intergraph sued Dell for patent infringement in December 2002. Dell then turned on Intel, claiming that the two companies had an indemnity agreement which obliged Intel to indemnify Dell from patent infringement claims relating to combining Intel microprocessors and other components in Dell systems.
In a statement yesterday, Intel said that the patent infringement action had now been settled and that it and Intergraph would ask the court to dismiss the action.
The settlement cancels the financial obligations created by the earlier agreement. Instead Intel is to pay Intergraph $225 million, with $125 million due by 5th April and $25 million to be paid in each of the next four quarters.
In addition, the settlement provides that Intergraph will grant Dell certain licences to Intergraph patents and will dismiss Intergraph's separate pending litigation against Dell. This agreement gives Dell a license to all Intergraph-owned patents, and covers past, present and future Dell products.
While Intel disputes Dell's interpretation of the agreement between them, the company "has decided to remove the current dispute from the courts and resolve the disagreement privately."
The new settlement with Intergraph also includes a covenant by Intergraph not to sue any Intel customers for products that include Intel microprocessors, Intel chipsets and Intel motherboards in combination.
However, Intergraph will continue to pursue its Clipper system patent claims, which relate to computer system memory management technology. It was suing Dell, HP and Gateway, but said it will now move to dismiss Dell from the case. It is still suing HP and Gateway, with a trial due to begin on 2nd August.
MicroUnity
Santa Clara, California-based MicroUnity Systems Engineering is suing Dell and Intel in a Texas court. The company alleges that certain Dell computer systems and Intel microprocessors infringe seven MicroUnity patents that cover aspects of multimedia processing and computer architecture.
MicroUnity launched in 1988 to develop multimedia processor technology for communications. The allegedly infringing features include the SSE (Streaming SIMD Extension) and SSE2 multimedia extensions, as well as the Hyper-Threading features provided in Dell's and Intel's newest products.