Foundry house United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) has disclosed it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Micron Semiconductor (Xi'an), and Micron Semiconductor (Shanghai) with a Chinese court, accusing them of infringing upon UMC's patent rights in China, including specific memory applications that relate to DDR4, SSD and memory used in graphics cards.

In the complaint filed with the Fuzhou Intermediate People's Court, UMC has asked that the defendants be ordered to stop manufacturing, processing, importing, selling and intending to sell the allegedly infringing products, destroy all inventory and related molds and tools and demand that Micron compensate the company for a total amount of CNY270 million (US$41.98 million) in damages, according to the Taiwan-based foundry service provider.

UMC said it has devoted a great deal of resources and manpower to researching and developing semiconductor manufacturing technology. Its achievements can be applied to logic chips or memory chips (DRAM), and the company has applied for patents in various countries while continuing to monitor these patents as market conditions evolve.

After conducting an in-depth review, UMC claims it found that Micron's products sold in China infringed upon the patent rights of the company.

The latest lawsuit comes in the wake of a trade secret row between UMC and Micron.

In September 2017, two former Micron Taiwan employees were indicted by prosecutors in Taiwan for allegedly stealing proprietary information and other materials related to DRAM manufacturing technology and giving them to UMC when joining the foundry house. The allegedly stolen trade information was meant to be used to help a UMC subsidiary in China develop DRAM production processes, according to prosecutors.

By: DocMemory
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