Saturday, November 19, 2011

Intellectual Property - Apple, Glaxo, Nanya, Hynix, Harvard

World Top Stories News - Intellectual Property - Apple, Glaxo, Nanya, Hynix, Harvard : A Paris court will rule Dec. 8 on Samsung Electronics Co.’s request for an emergency order halting Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s sales of its newest smartphone in France, a judge said yesterday after hearing arguments from both companies.

Samsung, based in Suwon, South Korea, says Cupertino, California-based Apple infringes its patents with its iPhone 4S. Apple has denied the claims.

Glaxo Didn’t Infringe Leukemia Treatment Patent, Court Says

Genmab A/S and partner GlaxoSmithKline Plc (GSK) survived a patent-infringement claim involving a method of treating chronic lymphocytic leukemia with specific antibodies.

A federal court in San Diego entered a judgment Nov. 15 that the two companies didn’t infringe patent 7,682,612.

Roche Holding AG (ROG)’s Genentech unit and Biogen Idec Inc. filed the suit in March 2010, claiming Genmab’s anti-CD20 antibody Arzerra infringed the patent.

U.S. District Judge Robert T. Benitez said he made his decision based on an earlier ruling in which he defined the reach of the patent, known as a “Markman” determination.

Although Biogen and Genentech will have the chance to appeal the Markman ruling, the two companies have conceded to Genmab and Glaxo’s counterclaim of non-infringement.

Benitez said halted further proceedings in the case pending the outcome of the appeal.

The case is Biogen Idec Inc. (BIIB) v. GlaxoSmithKline LLC, 3:10- cv-00608, U.S. District Court, Southern District of California (San Diego).

Nanya Technology Hasn’t Received Elpida Patent Notice

Nanya Technology Corp. (2408), a maker of memory chips, is “in the process of understanding” a patent infringement lawsuit brought by Elpida Memory Inc. (6665) of Tokyo, and hasn’t yet received the notice from the court, the Taoyuan, Taiwan-based company said in a statement to the local stock exchange yesterday.

Nanya said the case, filed by Elpida at the Intellectual Property Court in Taiwan and the U.S. International Trade Commission, has no material impact on its current operations.

Samsung Alters Tablet Design for Germany After Apple Wins Ban

Samsung Electronics Co. may start selling a modified version of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer in Germany this week, Jason Kim, a Seoul-based spokesman for the company said by phone yesterday.

The South Korean company changed the computer’s frame and speaker location, Kim said. Apple won an injunction against the product in a patent dispute.

Hynix, Micron Gain on ‘Surprise’ Verdict as Rambus Weighs Appeal

Micron Technology Inc. (MU) and Hynix Semiconductor Inc. (000660) shares rose after a jury rejected Rambus Inc.’s allegations that they conspired to prevent its memory chips from becoming an industry standard.

The verdict, which analyst Daniel Amir of Lazard Capital Markets called a “surprise,” sent Rambus shares down as much as 78 percent on Nov. 16, the biggest one-day loss since the company went public in 1997.

Rambus said it may appeal the verdict by a state court jury in San Francisco, which voted 9-3 to reject the company’s claims that Boise, Idaho-based Micron and Hynix, based in Ichon, South Korea, are liable for colluding to manipulate prices of dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips in violation of California antitrust law.

Jurors found by the same vote, after deliberating since Sept. 22, that the two companies didn’t plot to interfere with Rambus’s business relationship with Intel Corp. (INTC) and drive the world’s largest chipmaker away from its collaboration on RDRAM, or Rambus-designed memory, that began in the 1990s.

“The end outcome is not what most people really anticipated,” Amir said in an interview. “They’ve continuously highlighted that this case was the case where everyone wants a front seat, this is the case where they were going to really collect.”

Rambus’s defeat Nov. 16 was its biggest setback in an attempt over more than a decade to assert it owns technology that is fundamental to the $39 billion computer memory-chip industry and get producers of the semiconductors to pay for it.

Rambus said it would have made $3.95 billion in patent royalties without the alleged conspiracy. Under California law, a jury finding of antitrust damages in that amount would have been automatically tripled to $11.9 billion.

In the trial, which began in June, Rambus claimed that Micron and Hynix acted as a cartel to derail Intel’s 1996 decision to collaborate on RDRAM as a solution to a computer- memory bottleneck.

Micron and Hynix were accused of abusing agreements made in the 1990s to manufacture RDRAM by inflating its price and suppressing availability, eventually leading Intel to turn away from adopting and promoting Rambus memory as an industry standard.

Hynix and Micron built their case on claims that the Rambus-Intel relationship was undone by Rambus’s hubris.

An Intel manager testified that Rambus refused to waive a contractual provision allowing it to block shipments of Intel processors that relied on the chip designer’s technology if certain conditions requiring Intel to promote RDRAM weren’t met. That refusal, and not collusion among the chipmakers, doomed Intel’s vital support of Rambus, lawyers for Hynix and Micron told jurors.

Infineon Technologies AG, Europe’s second-largest maker of semiconductors, was removed from the antitrust case when the Neubiberg, Germany-based company agreed in 2005 to pay as much as $150 million to settle all legal claims with Rambus.

The case is Rambus Inc. (RMBS) v. Micron Technology Inc., 04-0431105, California Superior Court (San Francisco).

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