Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
In a not-unexpected move, TSMC late on Monday filed a lawsuit against GlobalFoundries, its pure-play foundry rival, accusing the manufacturer of patent infringment. In the suit, a response to a similar suit filed against TSMC by GlobalFoundries just over a month ago, the world's biggest contract maker of semiconductors is accusing its competitor of illegally using its intellectual property in its various photolithography processes. Furthermore, in order to prevent what they see as ongoing infringement, TSMC is also asking for the courts for an injunction against GlobalFoundries, which would essentially halt the latter's manufacturing lines.
[...] In their complaint, TSMC is demanding injunctions against GlobalFoundries, asking the courts to stop GlobalFoundries from making and selling chips using the allegedly infringing technologies. Which, given the broad nature of TSMC's claims, essentially covers all of GlobalFoundries' production lines in some form or another and would seemingly shutter GlobalFoundries manufacturing operations entirely. The company is also seeking "substantial monetary damages" for prior infringement.
Interestingly, if granted, the injunctions would be much broader than what GlobalFoundries asked for against TSMC back in August. Since the case involves US fabs and is being filed in the US (as well as Germany and Singapore), TSMC can seek remedies against GlobalFoundries directly, whereas GlobalFoundries has to seek import injunctions against TSMC's customers since TSMC's manufacturing takes place outside the US.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 02 2019, @08:06AM (2 children)
GlobalFoundries: Leading on patents, not process nodes?
If they have the right portfolio or get the right judges, they could pull a win.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by EJ on Wednesday October 02 2019, @08:39AM
Except that they aren't. The TSMC patents are MUCH more damaging to GF than the GF patents are to TSMC.
Even if GF has "more" guns, TSMC has bigger ones.
Also, TSMC is free to continue all of their operations outside of the USA during an injunction while GF is dead in the water if they get an injunction.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by EJ on Wednesday October 02 2019, @08:45AM
Also, look at the list of all the companies (specifically the American companies) that GF's silly lawsuit is attacking, then tell me what kind of sympathy you expect an American judge to give them.
***Apple
Broadcom
Mediatek
NVIDIA
Qualcomm
Xilinx
Arista
ASUS
BLU
***Cisco
***Google
HiSense
Lenovo
Motorola
TCL
OnePlus
Avnet/EBV
Digi-key
Mouser
Even with GF being an American company, just look at how well Samsung did in the USA against Apple.