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| (Source: Exparte.com) |
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) has petitioned the Patent Trial and Appeal Board to review the validity of a patent asserted against it by Advanced Integrated Circuit Process LLC (AICP).
On March 26, TSMC filed an inter partes review (IPR) petition challenging one of seven U.S. patents that AICP accused the chipmaker of infringing in an August 2024 suit in the Eastern District of Texas. The challenged patent is among a portfolio of semiconductor-related patents originally filed by Panasonic Corporation.
The seven asserted patents — U.S. Patent Nos. 7,579,227; 7,923,764; 8,198,686; 8,253,180; 8,587,076; 8,796,779; and 8,907,425 — relate to semiconductor devices and fabrication methods involving MISFET (metal insulator semiconductor field-effect transistor) structures. AICP alleges that TSMC's 28nm and FinFET process nodes (5nm, 7nm, 10nm, and 16nm) infringe these patents.
Products identified as allegedly infringing include the NXP T2081 chip and MediaTek's 28nm SoCs for the 28nm node, as well as Apple's A15 Bionic chip for the FinFET processes.
The IPR filing signals that TSMC may continue to challenge the validity of additional patents in the asserted group. All seven patents trace back to Panasonic and were included in a portfolio of 53 U.S. patents acquired by AICP from Nuvoton Technology Corporation Japan (NTCJ) in July 2024. NTCJ itself was formed following the 2020 transfer of Panasonic's semiconductor business to Nuvoton.
As of March 29, 2025, the 53 patents acquired from NTCJ appear to be the entirety of AICP's U.S. patent holdings obtained via acquisition. AICP filed a separate patent infringement lawsuit against United Microelectronics Corp. in September 2024, also in the Eastern District of Texas.
▷Related Article: TSMC Transfers 32 U.S. Semiconductor Patents to Mago Barca IP (2025. 04. 18.)
By PatenTrip
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