Sony, university settle Playstation chip spat

A ROW BETWEEN UW-Madison and Sony/Toshiba over chip technology was settled before it got to court.

Campus newspaper The Daily Cardinal said that the fight was over a diffusion barrier which UW-Madison claims to have invented.

The barrier prevents copper and silicon from interacting with each other. The paper quoted a WU-Madison representative as saying that details of the settlement are confidential.

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) owned a patent on the technology but it appears Sony was unaware of this. The licensing deal could run into a significant amount of money, which won't go to the inventors but to WARF.

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