Intel sued over hyperthreading, incentive plan

A FIRM has taken legal action against Intel alleging that it breached patents which underly so-called hyperthreading technology.

The case was filed in a Texas district court by Biax earlier this month.

Biax alleges that its patent, 4,847,755, titled "parallel process method and apparatus for increasing processing throughput by parallel processing low level instructions having natural concurrencies" is infringed by Intel in a number of ways.

Those include CPUs including the Itanium, the Itanium 2, Xeons, Pentium 4s, Pentium 4 Extreme Editions and mobile Pentium 4 chips that support HT.

Biax also alleges that other patents it holds, 5,021,945 and 5,517,628 are also breached by Intel.

And that's not all. Biax also states its patent 6,253,313 is breached by Intel. It wants a jury to decide on the case, and grant it an order stopping Intel and its licensees from infringing the four patents it alleges have been breached. It also wants money. µ

* AND IT never rains but it pours as far as lawyers are concerned - pours money that is. Another case filed in a Delaware district court accuses the directors of Intel including Craig Barrett, Lord John Browne of BP, Paul Otellini, Andy Grove and others of filing a misleading proxy statement.

The plaintiff, Frank D. Seinfeld, says a statement Intel filed at its annual meeting on May 18th 2005 refers to an incentive plan as payment for performance when reality it is a system of pay for pulse. That means, it's alleged, that when in one year earnings declined 87 per cent from the previous year, the bonus only declined 51 per cent. What does shareholder Seinfeld want? He wants the court to cancel the incentive plan, void the election of directors for 2005, and declare void the vote of the shareholders for the plan.

** AND ANOTHER patent infringement case, but this time brought by Intel against Amberwave appears to pre-empt a possible claim that Intel breached patent 6,831,292, issued to Amberwave and concerning strained silicon. Amberwave wrote a letter to Intel on May the 10th claiming that technology used in Prescott and Dothan microprocessors breached its patents. It appears Intel has invoked a trial to sort this one before Amberwave takes its own action.