Siemens AG appears to be building up a new business defending its patents, and yesterday said it had sued LG Semicon Co Ltd of South Korea, and its subsidiary LG Semicon America Inc, for infringing Siemens patents involving Dynamic Random Access Memory. Siemens says it and its Siemens Microelectronics Inc division hold seven patents covering DRAM technology, and accused LG Semicon of making and selling DRAM devices that infringe them. It seeks monetary damages. We have a strong patent portfolio representing billions of dollars of R&D investment said Andreas von Zitzewitz, president, memory products at Siemens’ Semiconductor Group. We will not let LG Semicon use unlicensed intellectual property developed and paid for by Siemens. Meanwhile, Siemens revealed more details about its claims on the PC industry over the PowerSave technology used to put PC systems into sleep mode when not in use (CI No 3,484). Siemens says it wants PC manufacturers to take out licenses for PowerSave, and that royalties depend on the amount of net sales a company has attained through products using it since January 1994. That could amount to 1% of the net sales price of both the PC and the monitor, though less if net sales reach higher amounts. PowerSave – which covers signalling between the PC and the montor – became the basis for the VESA DPMS Display Power Managing Signalling specification issued by the Video Electronics Standards Association in September 1993 and later endorsed by Microsoft Corp. Capetronics Inc, Hewlett-Packard Co, IBM Corp, NEC Corp, Sony Corp and ICL Plc were on the original working group. Siemens apparently only began talking to VESA about the intellectual property included in the standard in August 1997. VESA spokesperson Bill Lempesis said that it was acceptable for a standard to contain intellectual property, provided the owner agreed to license it openly to third parties on reasonable terms. Those who think the terms unreasonable can go to arbitration, under VESA rules, which Siemens apparently agreed to sign. Nevertheless, Siemens says it already has several infringement suits under preparation in the European marketplace. Computerwire is still waiting for reaction from Compaq, Dell, Gateway and IBM. HP said it wasn’t prepared to discuss the matter. Siemens is pulling out of both the DRAM and PC businesses, and appears to be intent on recouping some of its losses.
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