Silicon Valley chip maker Spansion wants to set an example with its suit against Samsung
Later today, Flash memory-maker Spansion filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics seeking to block U.S. imports of over 100 million hit products using the Korean company memory, including iPods, iPhones, BlackBerrys and Sony Ericsson mobile phones.
The Spansion patents named in these lawsuits are related to floating gate technology, which is the foundation for approximately 90 percent of the Flash memory market and a charge-trapping technology, which is expected to replace floating gate technology in the future.
Flash memory companies including Samsung have publicly announced their plans to transition to charge-trapping type technologies for their future generation products.
“Samsung treated Spansion the same way they treated SanDisk – they suddenly stopped negotiating with them. Must be a new tactic!Spansion’s response was to look at some key Samsung parts to look for infringement of Spansion patents. They claim to have found several. They now plan to make an example out of Samsung to help other prospective licensees to understand the wisdom of working out a fair deal,” explains Jim Handy, a market researcher at the firm Objective Analysis.
But the odds that the Sunnyvale, Calif., chip maker suit will affect this year’s holiday sales are slim as it will take several months before any decision, especially on an import ban, to take into effect.
