Court Enhances Atmel Award to $36.5 Million for Willful Patent Infringement by Silicon Storage Technology.Business Editors/High-Tech Writers SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 10, 2002 Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq:ATML ATML Automatic Test Markup Language ATML Automated Test Markup Language ) announced today that on Tuesday, May 7, 2002, in the matter captioned Atmel Corporation v. Silicon Storage Technology, Inc In the late 1980s, Bing Yeh and his cofounder assembled a small team of engineers in a rented office on Apollo Way in Sunnyvale, Calif., to develop a new breed of nonvolatile memory technology—SuperFlash—for code or data storage in electronic systems and embedded memory for . ("SST"), in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California The United States District Court for the Northern District of California is the Federal district court whose jurisdiction comprises following counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Del Norte, Humboldt, Lake, Marin, Mendocino, Monterey, Napa, San Benito, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa , Judge Samuel Conti, after reviewing an earlier jury award to Atmel of $20 million, has enhanced the award to 36.5 million. On April 26, a jury found that Atmel's U.S. Patent Nos. 4,511,811 and 4,673,829 (covering charge pumps for raising the voltage on a conductive line) were valid and willfully infringed by SST. The award enhancement was for willful infringement, and pre-judgment interest, bringing the total award to $36.5M. 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, Julie Mar-Spinola, stated, "This enhancement reinforces the position we took years ago, that these patents should have been licensed by SST, as we originally proposed." Atmel's President and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. , George Perlegos, stated, "We are gratified 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. by the court's findings and the judgment. Atmel will remain diligent in defending its intellectual property rights against those who choose to infringe them." Ms. Mar-Spinola added, "There remains one additional Atmel patent, U.S. Patent No. 4,451,903 ("Silicon Signature") to be tried against SST. Originally, all three patents were to be tried to the same jury; however, due to time constraints, the one remaining patent will be tried separately in the near future. The court has already determined that SST infringed that patent, and the trial to come will involve only the validity of that patent and damages. The '903 patent was the subject of an earlier exclusion order issued by the International Trade Commission. We hope that the trial on the '903 patent will happen soon so that this long litigation can be concluded and so that Atmel can be compensated monetarily for SST's infringement." 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, nonvolatile 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. |
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