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