Intergraph to be bought

FORMER GRAPHICS workstation maker and Intel legal sparring partner Intergraph is to be acquired by a private-equity group for about $1.3bn.

Intergraph now focuses on spatial-information software but might be best known to INQ readers for its intellectual property courtroom wrangles with Intel relating to parallel computing technology that found its way into the Epic instruction set used by Itanium and Itanium 2 chips. A series of suits was finally settled in 2004 after Intel had been ordered to pay Intergraph hundreds of millions of dollars.

Most recently, Intergraph has had a happy time of it successfully pursuing IP settlements with Acer and Sony.

Intergraph's face fits the recent trend of private funds acquiring profitable tech companies. Other examples include business continuity giant SunGard.

The deal should close by the end of the year.

Colin Powell recently gave the keynote address at an Intergraph conference. µ

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