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Conexant Settles With TI on DSL Patents

News
May 05, 20061 min
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Conexant Systems will pay Texas Instruments (TI) US$70 million to license certain DSL patents, settling a legal dispute between TI and GlobespanVirata, a Conexant subsidiary, they announced Friday.

Conexant’s dispute with TI dates to its 2004 acquisition of GlobespanVirata, which had ongoing litigation with TI. GlobespanVirata filed a complaint in June 2003 against TI claiming that Texas Instruments violated U.S. antitrust law by creating an illegal patent pool, manipulating the patent process and abusing the process for setting standards related to asymmetric DSL (ADSL) technology. TI countersued, alleging that GlobespanVirata infringed certain ADSL patents.

In February of this year, a federal jury found that GlobespanVirata infringed TI patents.

The agreement between Conexant, in Newport Beach, Calif., and TI, in Dallas, resolves the alleged past infringement of ADSL patents by GlobespanVirata and provides a license for these products under a previous 2003 agreement between Texas Instruments and Conexant, according to a statement Friday from Conexant.

A Conexant patent license with TI was also extended under the settlement to include a fully paid-up license for very high bit-rate DSL products, the company said.

-John Ribeiro, IDG News Service

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