Court Awards Atmel $20 Million For Patent Infringement By Silicon Storage Technologies.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 29, 2002 Atmel Corporation (Nasdaq:ATML ATML Automatic Test Markup Language ATML Automated Test Markup Language ) announced today that in the matter captioned Atmel Corporation v. Silicon Storage Technologies, Inc., Civ. Action No. C-96-00039-SC, in the Northern District of California, a jury has found that Atmel's U.S. Patent Nos. 4,511,811 and 4,673,829 (Charge Pump for Providing Programming Voltage to the Word Lines in a Semiconductor Memory Array) were valid and willfully willfully adv. referring to doing something intentionally, purposefully and stubbornly. Examples: "He drove the car willfully into the crowd on the sidewalk." "She willfully left the dangerous substances on the property." (See: willful) infringed by Silicon Storage Technologies, Inc. ("SST SST: see airplane. "), and awarded Atmel $19,979,640.00. In addition, based upon the jury verdict of willful infringement by SST, Atmel will ask for tripling of the damages, interest and payment of Atmel's attorneys' fees. "We attempted for six years to get SST to legally license our patented technology, but SST refused," said Julie Mar-Spinola, Atmel's Chief Litigation An action brought in court to enforce a particular right. The act or process of bringing a lawsuit in and of itself; a judicial contest; any dispute. When a person begins a civil lawsuit, the person enters into a process called litigation. and Intellectual Property Counsel. "The favorable verdict is particularly gratifying grat·i·fy tr.v. grat·i·fied, grat·i·fy·ing, grat·i·fies 1. To please or satisfy: His achievement gratified his father. See Synonyms at please. 2. because it validates the strength and value of Atmel's patents. Atmel will always fight diligently to protect our proprietary technology and intellectual property rights." Atmel's President and Chief Executive Officer, George Perlegos, stated, "We believe that the judgement and award are appropriate. The '811 and '829 patents provided a revolutionary and unique circuit design by which non-volatile memories like EEPROMs and Flash could operate from a single power supply. These building blocks were key to the growth of non-volatile memories in that they allowed the EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable ROM) A rewritable memory chip that holds its content without power. Although EEPROMs spawned flash memory, EEPROMs are byte addressable at the write level, whereas flash chips must erase a block of bytes before rewriting. and Flash memories to develop themselves into the $10 billion market that they are today." Ms. Mar-Spinola stated, "There remains one additional Atmel patent, U.S. Patent No. 4,451,903 ("Silicon Signature") to be tried. Since Judge Samuel Conti Conti (kôNtē`), cadet branch of the French royal house of Bourbon. Although the title of prince of Conti was created in the 16th cent. already decided that SST infringed the '903 patent, which was the basis for Atmel obtaining an exclusion order against SST in last year's litigation before the International Trade Commission, we look forward to another favorable outcome." About Atmel Founded in 1984, Atmel Corporation is headquartered in San Jose, California San Jose (IPA: /ˌsænhoʊˈzeɪ/) is the third-largest city in California, and the tenth-largest in the United States. It is the county seat of Santa Clara County. with manufacturing facilities in North America and Europe. Atmel designs, manufactures and markets worldwide, advanced logic, mixed-signal, non-volatile memory and RF semiconductors. Atmel is also a leading provider of system-level integration semiconductor solutions using CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) Pronounced "c-moss." The most widely used integrated circuit design. It is found in almost every electronic product from handheld devices to mainframes. , BiCMOS, SiGe, and high-voltage BCDMOS process technologies. Note to Editors: Atmel, the Atmel logo and combinations thereof are registered trademarks and others contained herein, are trademarks of Atmel Corporation. Terms and product names in this document may be the trademarks of others. Information: For more information, investors are invited to visit Atmel's website at www.atmel.com. Literature requests may be sent via e-mail to literature@atmel.com. |
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