Korea’s third-largest semiconductor manufacturer, Hyundai Electronics Industries (HEI) has won a lawsuit in a US court against Japan’s NEC, the world’s top chip maker, over a patent on semiconductor processing technology, the Korea Times reported. The Eastern District Court of Virginia ruled in favor of HEI over what it described as the method for forming a connection device in a semiconductor device. The technology is used to improve the efficiency of making connections in semiconductor circuitry and is used in 16Mb, 64Mb and 128Mb DRAM devices. The initial complaint was lodged with the court by NEC in December of last year, with HEI subsequently launching a counter-suit, which came as one of seven separate cases, six of which are still pending. According to what the paper described as calculations by industry officials based on the number dynamic of random access memory chips sold in the US, the suit could bring HEI an annual royalty of between $100m and $200m. This would be a considerable boost to its case for not merging with LG Semicon, the country’s second largest DRAM maker. The government is trying to force the merger through following three bad years for the semiconductor industry during which both companies racked up heavy losses. However executives from both companies point out the industry is now in a period of worldwide recovery, and as a result they expect to get back into the black this year, thus negating the supposed reason for the merger.
