Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Intellectual Ventures, Lattice Semiconductor Settle Patent Lawsuit

Bellevue-based Intellectual Ventures, and Hillsboro-based Lattice Semiconductor have settled a patent dispute between the two companies, saying this morning that Lattice will become a licensee of segments of IV's patent portfolio. Financial details of the settlement were not disclosed. IV had sued Lattice in 2010, over technology that IV said was being infringed upon in Lattice's field programmable gate array (FPGA) products. IV said Lattice is the second company in the lawsuit to settle with the company.

Intellectual Ventures is in the somewhat controversial business of patent licensing, often aggressively pursuing companies demanding licensing revenues for patent coverage from a very large trove of patents. The firm said it now has a portfolio of nearly 40,000 IP assets. Lattice Semiconductor makes field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), programmable logic devices (PLDs), and other semiconductors which are used in the development of electronics products.

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