Globalfounderies issue patient infringement lawsuit against TSMC seeking to ban imports on apple phone, nvidia, and pixel phone chips

[spartaman64]

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GlobalFoundries (GF) today announced that it filed lawsuits against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in the U.S. and Germany over the alleged infringement of 16 patents. The company said that it's looking to halt the import of processors made with the technologies and is seeking "significant damages from TSMC based on TSMC’s unlawful use of GF’s proprietary technology in its tens of billions of dollars of sales." Impacted companies include Nvidia and Apple.

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The lawsuits were filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission, the U.S. Federal District Courts in the Districts of Delaware and the Western District of Texas and, in Germany, the Regional Courts of Dusseldorf and Mannheim. GlobalFoundries leaned hard on TSMC being headquartered in Taiwan in its announcement, effectively portraying the dispute as an Eastern company profiting off the innovations of its Western competitor.

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AMD is currently GlobalFoundries' client for its 14nm Ryzen 1000- and 2000-series chips, along with the IOD/chipset dies that the company uses in tandem with its new Ryzen 3000-series CPUs, but isn't listed in the complaint even though TSMC is now its primary source of manufacturing for its new chips. TSMC hasn't publicly commented on GlobalFoundries' lawsuits at the time of writing.

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Here's a few snippets from the filing:

• Defendants (20):
• Foundry: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC)
• Fabless chip designers: Apple, Broadcom, Mediatek, nVidia, Qualcomm, Xilinx
• Electronic component distributors: Avnet/EBV, Digi-key, Mouser
• Consumer product: Arista, ASUS, BLU, Cisco, Google, HiSense, Lenovo, Motorola, TCL, OnePlus
• GF Patents in the cases (16): The technologies at issue relate to the advanced semiconductor devices and methods of manufacturing those devices. See table on next page for details.
• Accused Infringing Technologies (5): TSMC 7nm, 10nm, 12nm, 16nm , 28nm

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And a list of the purportedly-infringed patents:

Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/globalfoundries-files-patent-lawsuits-tsmc,40240.html

 

Holy shit if this is true and an import ban is implemented it would really screw with the mentioned companies. But probably even if the court rules in glofo's favor TSMC would just be made to pay royalty fees as the disruption to us companies would be too big in the case of an import ban and potentially damage the economy. A lot of people might side with tsmc and view glofo as greedy but if the patent infringement allegations are true i support companies protecting their intellectual property. But if they are not true then i would agree.

[kelvinhall05]

Good thing the only phone I can see myself buying in the near future will either be used or come straight from China.

[justpoet]

GloFo not very competitive right now, so litigation time.  TSMC being litigated against, so not as desirable for companies to go towards.  That basically leaves Samsung.  Interesting that they don't mention the TSMC smaller process nodes that are in testing.

[Levent]

this is like your ex gf suing you for current gf because she is using your ex's recipe.

/s

jokes aside, this might very well become one of the most expensive lawsuits we got this year.

[Vishera]

1 minute ago, Levent said:

this is like your ex gf suing you for current gf because she is using your ex's recipe.

/s

jokes aside, this might very well become one of the most expensive lawsuits we got this year.

It's more like a parent abandoning their child,

AMD founded Global Foundries,then sold it,and now transitioning to TSMC because Global Foundries is stuck with 14nm.

[Orcblood]

58 minutes ago, Vishera said:

It's more like a parent abandoning their child,

AMD founded Global Foundries,then sold it,and now transitioning to TSMC because Global Foundries is stuck with 14nm.

On the plus side (and I feel sorta evil saying this) maybe this will give Global Foundries a great boost to their coffers to invest in a better process tech beyond 12 & 14nm and make them competitive again with the other 3 leaders (Samsung, TSMC, and, lul ,Intel). 

[mr moose]

I don't think this will go anywhere,  It's way too complicated for a genuine jury to be able to decide on in a timely matter and the consequences of such an outcome would be so immense that the President would likely overturn the decision. 

 

 

EDIT: unless of course it's a big ruse to send TMSC broke and have GF take over all the manufacturing without banning supply, although I can't see how that would work. 

[GOTSpectrum]

Imagine if the court forces cross licensing and glofo get 7nm tech... I know it won't happen but the trump administration does seem to really wanna side with US corporations regardless... If it would happen under any administration, it would be his.

 

From a legal standpoint this is quite interesting, the proposed actions really do mess with many companies, including some of the richest in America, the ramifications could be felt globally.

 

P.S. I'm no lawyer, nor do I claim to be.

[Salv8 (sam)]

this will definitely screw up the economy...

economy after this ban is approved:

in all seriousness Australia would be hit the hardest (in first world country's, second world and third world country's would be hit as well but in a different way) since we haven't been doing well as of late, the last thing we need is our dollar to go down even further.

[Trik'Stari]

I'm torn between wanting cheap electronics, and wanting Apple and Nvidia to suffer profit loss.

 

As long as the price of a replacement screen (LCD and glass) for my Samsung S8 doesn't go up, I guess I don't have much of a stake in either party winning.

[Mira Yurizaki]

I'm sure in 5 years we'll see the headlines that say this was settled out of court for an untold sum while the rest of us suffer for some reason or another.

[williamcll]

Oh dear, if TSMC blocks AMD it would spell disaster.

[Orcblood]

5 hours ago, williamcll said:

Oh dear, if TSMC blocks AMD it would spell disaster.

 

I doubt AMD had a hand in this. Does make it awkward now between AMD and TSMC. It's like AMD had a child (Global Foundries) and that child, now somewhat old and independent, is now kicking AMD's friend (TSMC) in the shin while AMD and TSMC are in a deep conversation. 

[spartaman64]

6 hours ago, williamcll said:

Oh dear, if TSMC blocks AMD it would spell disaster.

 

25 minutes ago, Orcblood said:

 

I doubt AMD had a hand in this. Does make it awkward now between AMD and TSMC. It's like AMD had a child (Global Foundries) and that child, now somewhat old and independent, is now kicking AMD's friend (TSMC) in the shin while AMD and TSMC are in a deep conversation. 

also remember when samsung and apple were suing each other. samsung was still producing displays ram and nand chips for apple iphones

[porina]

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14800/tsmc-responds-to-lawsuit-by-globalfoundries-allegations-are-baseless

 

Not a surprise to anyone, TSMC denies everything and says it will fight.

[Kisai]

23 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

 

Holy shit if this is true and an import ban is implemented it would really screw with the mentioned companies. But probably even if the court rules in glofo's favor TSMC would just be made to pay royalty fees as the disruption to us companies would be too big in the case of an import ban and potentially damage the economy. A lot of people might side with tsmc and view glofo as greedy but if the patent infringement allegations are true i support companies protecting their intellectual property. But if they are not true then i would agree.

 

The result of patent infringement lawsuits is typically a settlement out of court. Typically when it comes to hardware, a ban is closing the barn door after the horses escaped. AMD, nVidia and Apple could always take their projects to GF, Samsung, or even Intel. So the worry that suddenly all the chips will be banned is overblown. 

 

Qualcomm/Broadcom and such aimed for bans, because patents on 3G/4G/5G technologies will outlive the technology's lifetime, so if a patent war happens on, say 5G modems, that will cause 5G adoption to halt in it's tracks. See various 3G and 4G competitors (eg WiMAX) and how it just disappeared once the patent war dust settled on LTE.

 

Aiming directly at the foundry, even if won, won't really do anything but delay products (since it results in a higher cost to build a chip) when their clients move capacity to another foundry.

 

[spartaman64]

15 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

The result of patent infringement lawsuits is typically a settlement out of court. Typically when it comes to hardware, a ban is closing the barn door after the horses escaped. AMD, nVidia and Apple could always take their projects to GF, Samsung, or even Intel. So the worry that suddenly all the chips will be banned is overblown. 

 

Qualcomm/Broadcom and such aimed for bans, because patents on 3G/4G/5G technologies will outlive the technology's lifetime, so if a patent war happens on, say 5G modems, that will cause 5G adoption to halt in it's tracks. See various 3G and 4G competitors (eg WiMAX) and how it just disappeared once the patent war dust settled on LTE.

 

Aiming directly at the foundry, even if won, won't really do anything but delay products (since it results in a higher cost to build a chip) when their clients move capacity to another foundry.

 

yes they could but afaik they would need to tweek the chip design because each company's manufacturing process is different. this was shown when apple dual sourced the a9 chip

also im not sure if other fabs like samsung or gloflo have enough capacity to accommodate all those companies shifting from tsmc to them so we might have some severe stock shortages also

[SenKa]

Id say "Wow, this would really eff up a lot of the technology economy", but there is literally 0 way GloFo is winning this.

 

But, do note on the off chance GloFo did win, the Nintendo Switch would be banned as it uses an nVidia SOC. Most people would probably care about that more than Pixel and iPhones being banned for sale in the US lmao.

 

Also all this would do is make grey market importing more popular than it already is

[Orangeator]

On 8/27/2019 at 6:18 PM, Arika S said:

GF will likely have to pay all of TSMCs court costs. Not much else they will get unless there is a counter suit

Yeah, TSMC will hold this up in court for so long that by the time a verdict is reached, the tech will be a half decade old.

[Jito463]

On 8/26/2019 at 2:00 PM, justpoet said:

Interesting that they don't mention the TSMC smaller process nodes that are in testing.

Probably because nothing is shipping on those nodes yet, and/or they have no way of verifying any patent infringement on a WIP tech.

10 minutes ago, Orangeator said:

Yeah, TSMC will hold this up in court for so long that by the time a verdict is reached, the tech will be a half decade old.

Sort of like the AMD-Intel dispute from the mid-late 2000's.

[mr moose]

3 hours ago, comander said:

It'd likely be decided by a judge. 
In the US a lot of semi-recent tech cases were decided by Lucy Koh. https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/meet-lucy-h-koh-a-silicon-valley-judge/

Given she resides in San Jose and the case has been filed in Texas, Delaware, the FTC along with two German courts I don't think she'll be getting in on the action.

[mr moose]

8 minutes ago, comander said:

Let me guess, Tyler-Longview?
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-05-25/the-texas-town-that-patent-trolls-built-j34rlmjc

Yeah, that's the place that's most sympathetic to patent trolls. 

 

And Delaware and two German courts and with the FTC.  It seems they are not banking on sympathy from one county.

 

If they are banking on anything it will be that they are a US company which carries favor in the US over Asian companies.

[xentropa]

On 8/27/2019 at 9:49 PM, Orcblood said:

 

I doubt AMD had a hand in this. Does make it awkward now between AMD and TSMC. It's like AMD had a child (Global Foundries) and that child, now somewhat old and independent, is now kicking AMD's friend (TSMC) in the shin while AMD and TSMC are in a deep conversation. 

I believe this is correct.  Everything I have seen suggests that AMD Glofo had a bad relationship and AMD was ecstatic when Glofo gave up anything smaller than 14nm which allowed AMD to break the exclusive manufacturing clause that would have dragged onto 2025.  AMD stock soaring seems to reflect this.