Via wins another round against Intel
Published: 07 Dec 2001 10:32 GMT
Via Technologies has won another round in court against rival chipmaker Intel, although the trial still hangs by a thread.
A judge in the US District Court of Northern California granted Taiwan-based Via a summary judgment on Wednesday in a patent infringement case filed by Intel in 1999. Intel claims that a chipset created by Via to work with AMD's Athlon processor violates its intellectual property.
In the ruling, the court said that Via altered the design of its chipset to get around one of the patents involved in the case before the chipsets were sold in the United States. As a result, Via did not infringe upon Intel's intellectual property.
Last month, the court threw out one of Intel's claims. Now, there is only one patent claim left in the case.
An Intel spokesman would not comment on whether the two companies might settle the last patent claim but added that he "wouldn't be surprised" if Via changed the design of its chipset to get around the final claim.
Via could not be reached for comment.
The case was filed in June 1999, and many of the claims originally alleged in the case were settled in July 2000.
Although this legal dispute appears to be winding down, the two sides remain far apart in another series of lawsuits. Intel has filed suits in the United States, Europe and Asia over a Via chipset made to work with Pentium 4 processors. Via does not have a license to manufacture these chipsets, according to Intel. For its part, Via has said that the Pentium 4 infringes on the design of its processors.
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