Globalfoundries files patent lawsuits against tsmc

GlobalFoundries announced today that it has filed lawsuits against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) in the United States and Germany for the alleged infringement of 16 patents. The company said it is seeking to stop the importation of processors made with the technologies and claims "significant damages from TSMC based on the illegal use of patented GF technology by TSMC in its tens of billions of dollars of sales." Among the affected companies are Nvidia and Apple.

GlobalFoundries sues 16 TSMC patent infringements

Note that GlobalFoundries said it wants to stop importing processors made with the technologies it believes are covered by its patents. The company recognized that TSMC does not usually import those processors into the United States or Germany; TSMC customers do it. That means lawsuits could affect much of the tech industry: TSMC said in 2018 it was "manufacturing 10, 436 different products using 261 different technologies for 481 customers."

The list of companies supplied by TSMC includes AMD, Nvidia, Apple, Mediatek, and many others, which means that GlobalFoundries could halt the tech industry if these lawsuits occur.

The lawsuits were filed with the United States International Trade Commission, the United States Federal District Courts in the Districts of Delaware and the Western District of Texas and, in Germany, in the Dusseldorf and Mannheim Regional Courts. GlobalFoundries relied heavily on the fact that TSMC was headquartered in Taiwan in its announcement, effectively portraying the dispute as an eastern company benefiting from the innovations of its western competitor. This would be affecting TSMC's 7nm, 10nm, 12nm, 16nm, 28nm technologies.

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"While semiconductor manufacturing has continued to shift to Asia, GF has resisted the trend by investing heavily in the semiconductor industries in the United States and Europe, spending more than $ 15 billion in the past decade in the United States and more than $ 6 billion. dollars in Europe's largest semiconductor manufacturing plant. These lawsuits aim to protect those investments and the US and European-based innovation that drives them, ” said Gregg Bartlett, GF's senior vice president of engineering and technology.

TSMC has not commented publicly on the lawsuits at the time of this writing. GlobalFoundries appears to believe that TSMC has been spying on its technologies for a while.

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