Apple Pays Taiwanese Firm $5m to Settle Patent Infringement

choi

(1) James Lee, Elan, Apple Settle Patent Litigation out of Court. CNA, Jan 5, 2012.
http://focustaiwan.tw/ShowNews/W ... amp;ID=201201050030

Note: Elan Microelectronics Corp
http://www.emc.com.tw/eng/index.asp

(2) Tim Culpan, Quanta Sues AMD Over Chips for NEC Notebook Computers. Bloomberg, Jan 5, 2011.
http://www.businessweek.com/news ... book-computers.html

(3) Sylvie Barak, Engineers Arrested for Selling Intel Test CPUs on eBay. EETimes, Jan 3, 2012
http://www.eetimes.com/electroni ... -test-CPUs-on-eBay-
(Taiwan on Jan 1 announced apprehension of 4 Tainese nationals and local employees of Intel for having sold beta version of Intel chips)

Note: For beta version, see software release life cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle
(section 1.3 beta)

(4) Prudence Ho and Yun-Hee Kim, Hua Hong, Grace Semiconductor to Merge. Asia Wall Street Journal, Dec 30, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB ... 28602275476374.html

Quote:

The tie-up "will create a stronger competitor to China's largest chip foundry, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. SMIC has been struggling to compete against its Taiwan rivals.

"Combined revenue at the merged entity is expected to reach US$600 million this year, while net profit is expected to reach US$100 million, the companies said in a joint statement. That would still put the company behind SMIC, which posted revenue of US$1.6 billion in 2010.

"over the past few years, SMIC has failed to upgrade its production technology, putting the company in the red.

"In a bid to boost its chip industry, China has also given tax breaks to foreign companies that are looking to set up advanced manufacturing facilities in the mainland to take advantage of lower manufacturing costs. In 2007, chip giant Intel Corp. set up a US$2.5 billion chip plant in Dalian, China, while South Korean chip maker Hynix Semiconductor Inc. has been producing memory chips used in computers and consumer electronics gadgets from a plant in Wuxi, since 2006. Samsung Electronics Co., the world's biggest memory-chip maker, earlier this month said it was seeking government approval to set up a flash-memory-chip manufacturing plant in China, which would be its first manufacturing base outside of Korea.

"Despite the merger, analysts said they are skeptical as to whether it would create a strong player to boost China's chip industry.