Orange County Patent Lawsuit: Broadcom Wins Permanent Injunction Against Emulex
Orange County – The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted Broadcom Corporation’s request for permanent injunction against certain Emulex products which were found to infringe on Broadcom’s U.S. Patent Nos. 7,058,150 and 7,471,691. Broadcom, a worldwide leader in semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications and a FORTUNE 500 company in Irvine, CA, originally claimed that Emulex, a leader in converged network solutions from Costa Mesa, CA, infringed on twelve U.S. patents, however, the court found that Emulex had only infringed on two patents.
The basis for Broadcom’s infringement claim for the ‘150 patent was Emulex’s use of a “phase interpolator to optimize clock and data recovery in a high speed chip” and its infringement claim for the ‘691 patent was for “techniques used in fibre channel arbitrated loop networking.” According to Broadcom, with this injunction Emulex will be prohibited to import, manufacture, use or sell the infringing products after 18-month “sunset” periods. For patent ‘150 the sunset period will run through April 12, 2013 and for the ‘691 patent the sunset period will run through June 16, 2013. With the injunction in place Emulex can continue to distribute and sell enjoined products such as its Ethernet controllers BladEngine2 and BladeEngine3 so long as the order for the product was placed before the sunset period. Also, during the sunset period Emulex must pay a royalty of 9 percent to Broadcom on any sales of the enjoined products.
In a statement from Arthur Chong, Broadcom’s Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, he stated, “We are pleased with the Court’s decision. The Court’s decision recognizes the important principle that Broadcom should not have to compete against its own patents. Broadcom will continue to vigorously protect its intellectual property rights, including seeking permanent injunctions against its competitors’ sale of infringing products where appropriate.”
The CEO of Emulex, Jim McCluney stated, “Emulex is dedicated to protecting the interest of its customers. We have been working with our suppliers to implement design changes to the SerDes modules included in the impacted products.” Emulex has stated it will claim approximately $600,000 for liability damages to Broadcom in addition to the $387,922 that Broadcom has already reported. Emulex has begun the redesigning process of the infringing products.