Small company turns defense into offense and nets $100 million plus
“Chipworks Patent Intelligence played a critical role in securing the exact patents we needed to launch a strong counter attack. The aggressor was caught completely off guard and unprepared.”
- Chief IP Counsel
Situation
A small semiconductor manufacturer faced excessive patent licensing fee demands from one of the world’s leading semiconductor providers, which held an extensive patent portfolio. Prior art research and invalidity claims could never eliminate the threat – the small company needed a cross license at a price that wouldn’t kill its business. The company had few valuable patents until it acquired a small design firm and half-interest in a high value patent portfolio.
Challenges
- Quickly complete due diligence, evaluate and rank each patent to secure ammunition against the world leader
- Build an offensive strategy and bolster its fight to stay in business
Chipworks Solution
- Identified patents valuable in fighting the leader through a full portfolio review and preliminary reverse engineering
- Drafted an evaluation report and criteria for patent selection helping the client to obtain the most valuable patents
- Completed thorough reverse engineering on the world leader’s product portfolio to identify infringement
- Used in-depth circuit extraction to create 10 Claim Charts on eight patents
Results
- Foiled the world leader’s attempt to put it out of business by using offense as a successful defense
- Secured a cross-license agreement with the world leader and royalty payments exceeding $100 million
- Recouped more than 250 times its investment with Chipworks
Download Printable Version