Computer Info

Power Management Tech At Issue

December 31, 2009
By Andy Patrizio

A Taiwanese analog integrated circuit (IC) designer has filed a patent infringement complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission against Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and four graphics card makers, two in China and two in the U.S..

Richtek Technology claims AMD (NYSE: AMD), Hong Kong-based Sapphire Technology, Taiwan's uPI Semiconductor, and U.S. firms Diamond Multimedia and XFX Technology infringed on three of its patents. It also claimed the companies used its business secrets "inappropriately."

Richtek said that it had been informed earlier this week that the ITC had begun conducting an investigation into the matter. The company has also filed lawsuits against the companies in district court in northern California, asking for an injunction and compensation, it said.

AMD and XFX were both closed for the holidays and unavailable for comment. A spokesperson for Diamond declined to comment.

In its early years, Richtek focused on PC voltage control and analog IC products, and has recently expanded to become a supplier of power-management solutions for various consumer electronics products, such as digital still cameras, liquid-crystal displays, and mobile handsets.

The company claims that the graphics chip and card makers have been using its patented technology related to pulse width modulation (PWM), a method of providing varying amounts of power between completely on and completely off. Richtek said that the offending technologies from AMD and the card makers all were involved with PWM and power management.

It's all very esoteric, the kind of material only engineers can truly make sense of, and analyst Jon Peddie of Jon Peddie Research declined to wade into the technological merits of the case for that reason.

But he did say the injunction request is a common one.

"Using the ITC as a club to prohibit shipments is a common tactic used by patent attorneys and it tends to get the attention of the company being accused. Case in point is the recent Microsoft Word XML case. So it's the same kind of mechanism," he said, referring to Microsoft's recent loss on appeal to i4i. The small Canadian firm had claimed that the software giant infringed on its patented custom XML features in Office Word 2007 and other products. However, Microsoft had since developed and shipped patches to avoid using the infringing code.

"When the ITC is used to prevent revenue shipments, the company will immediately put engineers on the problem to determine the validity of the patent," Peddie added.

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