Research
Intel and the university filed a notice of settlement in federal court in Madison, Wisconsin, Oct. 3, two days before todays scheduled start of the trial. The accords terms werent disclosed and were still being prepared, according to the filing.
The universitys licensing agency, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF, owns a patent issued in 1998 for technology it said improves the speed and efficiency of the chips, which it calls a “major milestone in the field of computer micro processing.” One of the inventors, Gurindar Sohi, presented his work to Intel and offered to discuss licensing it, according to the complaint, filed in February 2008.
WARF had claimed Intel declined to license the technology and sought cash to compensate it for use of its inventions in the Intel Core 2 Duo processor and other microprocessors. The suit also asked for a court order barring Santa Clara, California-based Intel from infringing the patent.
Intel had countered that the university breached a contract by accepting money to begin a research program and then filing suit. U.S. District Judge Barbara B. Crabb dismissed that claim, saying the lawsuit belonged in state, not federal, court.
Intel had claimed the university secretly obtained the patent on research funded by the U.S. government and Intel in the mid-1990s, and had been seeking a ruling that it has the rights to the results of the research, at no cost. The company said it made payments of $28,000 and $30,000 after receiving signed letters in 1994 and 1995 that Intel was to have “unrestricted rights” to the research results, the chipmaker had said in legal filings.
Intel had $37.6 billion in revenue in 2008, the company reported in January.
The case is Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation v. Intel Corp., 08-cv00078, U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin (Madison).