Infineon Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against Volterra Semiconductor

Infineon Technologies AG announced that on January 21, 2010, it filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Volterra Semiconductor Corp. in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware. The suit seeks damages, including enhanced damages for willful infringement and injunctive relief.

The suit alleges that Volterra’s voltage regulators and pulse width modulation controllers infringe four United States patents owned by Infineon. Voltage regulators and pulse width modulation controllers provide and maintain the power needed by the central/graphic processing unit (CPU/GPU) in servers, PCs, notebooks and high-end graphics cards.

Volterra has previously sued Infineon in November 2008 for patent infringement in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. In July 2009, Volterra filed a motion in that matter for a preliminary injunction, which was later denied by the district court. No trial date has been set in that matter. The three patents asserted by Volterra in the action filed by Volterra in California are the subjects of pending reexamination proceedings that are currently before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. The Patent Office has issued formal rejections of all of the asserted claims as to two of the three patents. The Patent Office has not filed a formal response as to the third patent, but that is expected shortly.