Tessera Technologies, Inc. announced today that it and certain of its subsidiaries filed legal proceedings for patent infringement in both domestic and international jurisdictions against Broadcom and, in some cases, against certain of Broadcom’s customers and distributors.
The proceedings are in the United States International Trade Commission, the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, and courts in Germany and the Netherlands, alleging infringement of a total of eight patents.
Tessera first reached out to Broadcom several years ago to explore technical collaboration on semiconductor technology development, and subsequently to discuss licensing Tessera’s intellectual property. Following a series of in-depth licensing discussions, the parties were unable to reach a licensing arrangement.
“Today’s actions were not taken lightly and are made only after years of effort to reach a fair and equitable resolution without litigation,” said Tom Lacey, CEO of Tessera. “At this point, we believe that litigation is necessary to defend our intellectual property rights. As we have said in connection with other legal matters, we remain willing to negotiate a resolution that fairly compensates Tessera and its shareholders for our valuable intellectual property. However, we are also fully prepared to proceed through the entirety of the legal process, and we remain very confident in our ability to achieve a positive outcome.”
Broadcom is not an existing Tessera customer, and as such the proceedings announced today do not impact Tessera’s second quarter revenue or earnings per share guidance or 2016 full-year revenue guidance. The company expects 2016 litigation expense will remain within its current target operating model based on anticipated case activity for the remainder of the year.
Tessera researches and develops semiconductor and imaging technology that is used in billions of electronic devices. Tessera has a portfolio of over 4,000 patent assets protecting its technologies that it licenses to its customers. The company develops computational imaging and photography, as well as semiconductor packaging and interconnects.