Putting the legal position on whether or not a microprocessor designer can get around any danger of copyright infringement action by having the part fabricated by a company that has a patent cross-licence agreement with the owner of the copyright, a federal judge in Dallas ruled that Cyrix Corp is not infringing Intel Corp’s patents by selling a cloned version of the 80486 microprocessor. Judge Paul Brown ruled Cyrix is immune from patent infringement claims because its foundry, SGS-Thomson Microelectronics NV has a cross-licence agreement with Intel. Intel points out that the ruling is in direct contrast to the decision it received on the same issue last year when US District Court Judge Helen Frye in the US District Court in Oregon imposed a preliminary injunction against ULSI Inc of Santa Clara, California, ruling that ULSI could not avoid patent infringement by seeking foundry services from a company licensed by Intel. An appeals court will now have to resolve the suits.
