Patent Law

Shorted Out

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Tessera, semiconductor miniaturization maven, took a half-dozen companies to task before the International Trade Commission (ITC), including Motorola, Qualcomm, Freescale Semiconductor, and ATI, a unit of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). Monday morning, just before the ITC trial was scheduled to begin, Administrative Law Judge Theodore Essex brought the tent poles down, pending reexamination outcome of the asserted Tessera patents.

In the past week, Tessara received three non-final office actions on 5,852,326;  6,433,419; and 6,465,893. The '326 and '419 patents are at issue in the ITC action. 5,861,666 has also been rejected during reexam.

Tessara has to date garnered over $250 million in license fees for its patent portfolio, over the course of numerous aggressive litigations.

Punters on the exchange got panicky about the reexam: Tessara shares tanked 38%, to an annual low of $22.15.

Patent Hawk has been involved in prior art search for Tessera patents.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on February 27, 2008 (boomark / email).