Spansion and Samsung Electronics are set to resume their legal dispute after a bankruptcy judge rejected a $70 million patent settlement between the two companies.

SanDisk and Samsung Electronics on May 27 announced they have reached an agreement to renew the cross license of their semiconductor patent portfolios. The companies have also signed a flash memory supply agreement under which Samsung will continue to make available to SanDisk a guaranteed portion of its flash memory production output.

Last year, for the first time, the US Patent & Trademark Office issued more patents to foreigners than to Americans. And the rest of the world is expected to widen its lead over the US as manufacturing and research and development continue to migrate to emerging markets.

Chinese companies are just as eager to defend patents as Western firms, and that China's intellectual-property regime has been tightened in recent years.

Chief executives from 28 large corporations, including Google, Cisco, Research in Motion (RIM) and Intel, sent President Barack Obama a letter on Mar. 25, urging him to support the Patent Reform Act of 2009. The problem, they say: Litigation costs and patent infringement damages are stifling innovation.

Microsoft has said it settled a patent dispute over car navigation technology with TomTom NV for an undisclosed amount. Under the terms of the five-year settlement, TomTom will pay the software maker for use of eight patents.

Toyoda Gosei and Showa Denko have signed a patent cross-licensing agreement, while Cree and Honeywell have agreed to end their patent dispute. Cree settles lawsuit with Honeywell

Dutch navigation device maker TomTom filed a countersuit against Microsoft Corp, accusing the US company of violating its patents related to car navigational technology and other computing functionality.

Discovery Communications says the Kindle electronic book readers from Amazon.com violate a patent that Discovery registered in 2007.

Vizio said Friday that the U.S patent office had rejected claims made by Funai on one of the patents that are the subject of an ongoing patent suit between the two companies.

Hynix is gratified that the court rejected Rambus' request for an injunction, but is disappointed by the district court's damages ruling and will file an appeal when the final judgment is entered. Hynix believes that Rambus's patents, as has been recently confirmed by certain rulings of the US Patent & Trademark Office, are invalid. In addition, Hynix maintains that Rambus' conduct in destroying evidence relevant to the litigation between Hynix and Rambus, and Rambus and the rest of the DRAM industry, bars Rambus from enforcing its patents.

South Korean electronic giant Samsung Electronics has said it had asked a US trade panel to block imports of Eastman Kodak's digital cameras in an ongoing patent row.

Tessera reported 4Q sales of $69.1 million, up 30% year over year, in line with estimates, and profit of 41 cents per share, excluding some costs, which was ahead of the average estimate of 36 cents. The company designs devices that attach chips to PCBs and gets royalty payments for the use of those designs by others.

Rambus's case against Micron may be headed for dismissal if comments by federal judge Ronald Whyte are any indication. According to Whyte, a Delaware court's decision earlier this January to throw out Rambus' claims based on spoliation leave him no room for discretion.

Micron Technology and Mosaid Technologies said Monday that they have settled all pending litigation between them.

Mosaid Technologies says it hasn't been affected by the pending insolvency filing of German customer Qimonda AG, but the assurance didn't prevent a drop in MSD stock.