Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Micron Ties Into Patent Firm

Boise, Idaho-based semiconductor maker Micron said today that it has inked a licensing agreement with Intellectual Ventures, which operates a storehouse of patents. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Intellectual Ventures is headed by former Microsoft CTO Nathan Myhrvold, and has been amassing a major collection of patents -- being applied currently to patent protection, but also having been used in some patent lawsuits. The two said the agreement will give the firms an option to acquire patents from each other to defend against patent lawsuits. Intellectual Ventures is actually in the midst of a patent lawsuit against a number of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) makers over its patents.