A jury in Dallas handed Cypress Semiconductor Corp a victory in its defence of a lawsuit brought by Texas Instruments Inc alleging infringement of its patent on test circuitry used in many of Cypress’s programmable logic device and asking $8.8m in damages, tripled to $26.4m for willfulness on Cypress’s part: the jury held that Cypress does not infringe the patent, which is anyway not valid because of prior invention; and because Texas did not disclose the best mode of the invention to the patent office; Judge Barefoot Sanders (pause for double take) also ruled in a directed verdict that Cypress’s alleged infringement was not willful; that matter was not given to the jury.
