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GlobalFoundries Files Lawsuit Against IBM to Protect its Intellectual Property and Trade Secrets

TheLostSwede

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GlobalFoundries (GF) today sued IBM for trade secret misappropriation. The complaint asserts the former semiconductor manufacturing company has unlawfully disclosed GF's confidential IP and trade secrets, after IBM sold its microelectronics business to GF in 2015. The technology at issue was collaboratively developed, over decades, by the companies in Albany, New York and the sole and exclusive right to license and disclose that technology was transferred to GF upon the sale.

In the legal action filed in federal court in the Southern District of New York, GF asserts that IBM unlawfully disclosed GF IP and trade secrets to IBM partners including Intel and Japan's Rapidus, a newly formed advanced logic foundry, and by doing so, IBM is unjustly receiving potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing income and other benefits.




The complaint notes that IBM's executives have described the Intel and Rapidus partnerships as based on decades of technology derived from research conducted at the Albany NanoTech Complex, technology that they had no right to disclose. It also raises concerns over the extent to which IBM may have unlawfully disclosed GF's IP and trade secrets beyond these two heavily publicized partnerships.

GF is asking for compensatory and punitive damages as well as an injunction against IBM preventing further unlawful disclosure and use of GF's trade secrets.

In addition, GF's complaint asserts that IBM is targeting and recruiting GF's world-class engineering talent at the company's manufacturing facility, which is located near the Albany NanoTech Complex. In the complaint, GF asks the court to end the unlawful recruitment efforts, which have accelerated since the IBM/Rapidus announcement in December 2022.

GF has made significant investment in research and development to advance its feature-rich technology and is one of the world's leading semiconductor foundries with a global footprint and more than 13,000 employees, 2,500 of whom are based at the company's headquarters in upstate New York. GF will aggressively defend its investments in technology against those who violate them, as the complaint demonstrates IBM has repeatedly done.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source
 
suck it big blue :rockout:
 
Wow. Funny if GF ends up owning part of Intel.
How can you see it happening?
If anything, IBM head is on the line, isn't it?
 
Says the company which resigned on its own R&D and became a patent troll...
 
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I would not call either company a patent troll.
I think, that with this lawsuit, they began to fulfill the definition. They stopped R&D, thus offer no new products (the best they have is what? A 12nm chip line?) and now they suit for patent/IP infringement, because that is all know-how they have even if it is several generations old.
In comparison: Samsung is at 4 or 5nm node (comparable with 6nm TSMC), TSMC is entering 3nm mass production and Intel still has problems even with its 10nm process (Intel7), though they promised 7nm mass production (Intel 4) already for last year.
 
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I think, that with this lawsuit, they began to fulfill the definition. They stopped R&D, thus offer no new products (the best they have is what? A 12nm chip line?) and now they suit for patent/IP infringement, because that is all know-how they have even if it is several generations old.
In comparison: Samsung is at 4 or 5nm node (comparable with 6nm TSMC), TSMC is entering 3nm mass production and Intel still has problems even with its 10nm process (Intel7), though they promised 7nm mass production (Intel 4) already for last year.
IBM sold all of their foundry IP to GF and left the business. Now we see they sold the same IP again to Intel. If Intel has used that IP in their current designs, guess what? Intel will have to pay GF.
 
I think, that with this lawsuit, they began to fulfill the definition. They stopped R&D, thus offer no new products (the best they have is what? A 12nm chip line?) and now they suit for patent/IP infringement, because that is all know-how they have even if it is several generations old.
In comparison: Samsung is at 4 or 5nm node (comparable with 6nm TSMC), TSMC is entering 3nm mass production and Intel still has problems even with its 10nm process (Intel7), though they promised 7nm mass production (Intel 4) already for last year.

They dropped out of the bleeding edge race (probably wise for them), but they put a lot of money into R&D. Lots of business for them even of they're out of that particular race.
 
I think, that with this lawsuit, they began to fulfill the definition. They stopped R&D, thus offer no new products (the best they have is what? A 12nm chip line?) and now they suit for patent/IP infringement, because that is all know-how they have even if it is several generations old.
In comparison: Samsung is at 4 or 5nm node (comparable with 6nm TSMC), TSMC is entering 3nm mass production and Intel still has problems even with its 10nm process (Intel7), though they promised 7nm mass production (Intel 4) already for last year.
R&D isn't just about the development of smaller nodes. Consider their collaboration with PsiQuantum on the first single photon detector in a silicon chip. Their R&D budget was $478 million in 2022. You're also wrong about Intel's processes. Intel 10 is actually slightly denser than TSMC's N7 so it's a 7 nm process and Intel 4 is closer to TSMC'S N3 than N5.
 
IBM sold all of their foundry IP to GF and left the business. Now we see they sold the same IP again to Intel. If Intel has used that IP in their current designs, guess what? Intel will have to pay GF.
What if Intel used it as an example of what not to do?
 
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