
The action is being seen as a countersuit after UMC was indicted in a California court in December 2017 over the alleged theft of DRAM trade secrets from Micron by three UMC employees. The complaint alleges that UMC and Jinhua Integrated Circuit conspired to gain access to Micron confidential information by hiring former Micron employees.
Now UMC said it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Micron Semiconductor (Xi’an) Co., Ltd. and Micron Semiconductor (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in the Fuzhou Intermediate People’s Court of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The foundry alleges that Micron is infringing in three specific memory applications that relate to the DDR4 interface standard, solid-state drives and memory used in graphics cards.
UMC has asked the court to order Micron to stop making, importing and selling the allegedly infringing products, to destroy all the inventory and related manufacturing tools and to pay UMC RMB 270 million (about $42 million) in compensation.
The suit comes a matter of days after Intel and Micron announced a loosening of the ties between the two companies with the coming to an end of collaboration on 3D-NAND flash memory R&D.
At the time this story was posted Micron had not responded to the latest suit.
Related links and articles:
News articles:
Intel, Micron call time on 3D-NAND collaboration
UMC appoints twin leaders – follows TSMC model
