Nanya Technology Corp (南亞科技), the nation's second-largest computer memory chipmaker, said it has signed agreements with Japan's Renesas Technology Corp to share licenses and settle their more than two-year-long patent infringement battle, the companies said in a joint statement released yesterday.
But they did not disclose in the statement the specific terms and conditions of the cross-license agreement or details about the exchange of patent licensing rights and financial terms.
Renesas Technology, based in Tokyo, is a joint venture between Hitachi Ltd and Mitsubishi Electric Corp. It filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Nanya Technology in December of 2003 to the US' Northern California District Court.
The Japanese company was then also going after Nanya Technology in Japan and filed three similar lawsuits to the Tokyo District Court in early 2004, seeking damages and a permanent injunction against the import and sale of Nanya Technology's dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips to the US market.
DRAM is the main memory used in personal computers.
Separately, Inotera Memories Inc (
In a statement to the Taiwan Stock Exchange yesterday, Inotera Memories said it had raised US$421 million by selling 40 million global depositary receipts at US$10.53 each, with one unit representing 10 common shares. The share sale was completed on Monday.
The chipmaker sold shares to help fund construction of its second plant, a US$2 billion factory in Taoyuan, where the company's headquarters are located. Inotera is expanding production of DRAM chips to tap a shortage after rivals such as Samsung Electronics Co shifted to more profitable flash memory semiconductors, used in products such as mobile phones.
Inotera Memories plans to begin installing equipment in its second plant in November this year and start mass production there in the second quarter of next year, the company said on March 14.
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