VIA puts legal problems in past

But as of last Friday, the share price of NT$23.8 on the benchmark TAIEX was still 45 percent below the share price at the start of the year. And there's no guarantee the bounce will turn into a long-term upward trend.

"It could be short-lived," Liu said. "The patents granted by MediaTek are mostly for manufacturing low-margin recordable discs, or low-end products. The question now is whether VIA is capable of developing chips that can compete with rivals."

In a last-ditch attempt to regain lost ground, in July VIA hired Kelly Wu (吳惠瑜) from arch rival Intel to lead the Embedded Design-Win Project, which is seen by most industry watchers as the company's most lucrative product line, with a gross margin above 30 percent.

Wu worked for nearly two decades at Intel, before switching to a new career at its biggest competitor.

"It's true that Wu will give a boost to VIA, which lacks marketing talent," KGI chip industry analyst Aaron Jeng (鄭明宗) said. "With Wu's marketing specialty, she may help VIA secure orders for its new products, which are mostly customized."

The team is working in areas beyond computing, including MRT ticket cards and consumer electronics gadgets such as mobile phones and DVD recorders.

"But we don't think a management change will be a cure-all for VIA," Jeng said. "The company still has a long way to go before it starts to enjoy the fate of the high-margin products."