"Although discussions are ongoing with Sony and Renesas Electronics to secure their continued access to our semiconductor packaging technology through a licensing relationship with us, these discussions have not sufficiently advanced, thus necessitating this lawsuit," said Henry Nothhaft, chairman and CEO of Tessera.

Renesas Electronics has agreed to sell some of its semiconductor-related patents to US-based Acacia Research, according to the company.

Spansion on August 6 filed three complaints against Samsung, alleging patent violations in a broad range of Samsung flash memory products that go into devices like tablets and smartphones. A Spansion spokesman declined to comment on which products those may be. However, Apple's iPad and iPhone 4 use Samsung flash memory.

Chip designer Rambus has reported bigger-than-expected losses for the second quarter of 2010, although revenues rose with the help of agreements signed earlier this year with Samsung Electronics.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington has rescheduled hearings for Oct. 7. Rambus has been involved in long-standing disputes with Hynix and Micron over patent infringement as well as antitrust issues.

Apple might be planning to integrate some kind of solar-charging technology in a future iteration of its handheld devices, according to a new patent filing.

Under the terms of the royalty bearing agreement, Qualcomm has granted CK Telecom a worldwide patent license to develop, manufacture and sell WCDMA and TD-SCDMA subscriber units and modem cards/modules.

Elpida plans to withdraw its patent lawsuits filed with the Virginia US district court while Infineon and its US subsidiary have agreed to abandon a patent infringement complaint against Elpida and other respondents filed last February with the US International Trade Commission in Washington D.C.

The patent wars are raging in the mobile device market, and they could result in rising costs for handset makers and higher gadget prices for wireless carriers and consumers.

Microsoft and HTC signed a patent deal involving HTC's mobile smartphones running the open source Android operating system

Avago Technologies has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against STMicroelectronics, alleging that certain STMicroelectronics products infringe four of Avago's patents covering optical navigation technology.

The lawsuit that Apple filed on Tuesday against HTC opens up a lot of questions about the future of Android phones like the Nexus One and the cellphone market in general.

The prototype solar cells demonstrated a power-conversion efficiency of 9.6%, a 40% gain in efficiency from solar cells built by others using the same or similar widely available materials, said David Mitzi, who leads the research team at IBM Research.

The company, which receives licensing fees from patents of its memory chip designs, lost US$23.3 million compared with a loss of US$15.5 million in fourth-quarter 2008.

China's Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. (AMEC) also made a payment to Applied Materials of an undisclosed amount, and the parties agreed to collaborate on projects in the future.

Samsung Electronics and Rambus have reached an agreement settling all claims between them and the licensing of Rambus' patent portfolio for all Samsung semiconductor products.

Eastman Kodak hopes to illuminate a clearer picture about its photo-viewing technology. It has alleged that Apple's iPhones and RIM's camera-enabled BlackBerry devices violate its patent for digital image previewing.

The settlement could lead to improved cameras in Samsung mobile phones.

Tessera Technologies, which licenses miniaturization technology for electronic devices, has said its fourth-quarter revenues were going to fall below its previous guidance due to lower royalties.