A deal by which Spansion was to drop all patent lawsuits against Samsung and give the South Korean company rights to all its existing and future patents, has been scuppered by a Delaware judge in the US.
Under the deal Spansion, which is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection,
would have been paid $70m by Samsung.
What precipitated the legal action was a group of Spansion’s creditors who said that the deal unfairly favoured Samsung and would prevent it finding a buyer or investor.
The judge was of the opinion that Spansion would do better pursuing its lawsuit against Samsung than accepting the settlement.
As well as suing Samsung in Delaware, Spansion asked the U.S. International Trade Commission last November to block imports into the US of more than one million products, including iPods and BlackBerrys.
Samsung has sued Spansion’s Japanese subsidiary, and counter-sued Spansion in Delaware.
Samsung was the first company to be targeted by Spansion in its move to set up an IP licensing operation. Spansion thought that the expertise of its Israeli subsidiary, the IP company Saifun, would allow it to set up an IP licensing activity.
Spansion’s trapped charge flash technology has been seen as one candidate for becoming the mainstream non-volatile memory technology after floating gate flash becomes impossible to scale – thought to be somewhere around the 32nm generation.
However Samsung has been working independently on trapped charge flash memory technology and reckons it has its own, superior, solution.
See: Spansion files for bankruptcy in the US