Gadgets made by a host of big-name manufacturers, including Nokia and HTC, could be banned from import into the US, if a patent violation investigation being conducted the US International Trade Commission (ITC) rules in the claimant's favor.

Micron Technology has announced that the US District Court of Delaware has found that patents Rambus had asserted against Micron are unenforceable. The Delaware Court found that “the spoliation conduct was extensive, including within its scope the destruction of innumerable documents relating to all aspects of Rambus’ business.”

Microsoft and Primax Electronics has announced that the patent infringement case brought by Microsoft against Primax in the US District Court in Northern California and before the International Trade Commission (ITC) has been settled, and that Primax has entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement covering Microsoft's patents for U2 and Tilt Wheel technology. The agreement covers both past and future sales of the relevant products in the US. Terms of the agreement are confidential.

The US International Trade Commission agreed to investigate Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics based on a complaint filed by Eastman Kodak. Kodak submitted its complaint in November, charging LG and Samsung with violating patents in their camera phones and other mobile products. The relevant patents cover technology related to image capture, compression and data storage, and a method for previewing certain images.

The ruling is a victory for defendants Qualcomm, Motorola, Spansion, STMicroelectronics NV, Freescale Semiconductor and ATI Technologies, a company purchased in 2006 by Advanced Micro Devices. The commission's administrative law judge found that the two Tessera patents were valid, but weren't infringed by the defendants. "It's a great result," said Alex Rogers, Qualcomm's senior vice president and legal counsel.

Rambus shares surged for the second straight day Wednesday after the chip maker received a positive pre-trial ruling in California in its patent case against some of the largest semiconductor companies in the world. According to a court document on Rambus's Web site, on Monday a U.S. District judge issued a summary decision in favor of Rambus, saying the chip makers infringed on certain aspects of Rambus's patents. The chipmakers named in the case are Hynix Semiconductor, Samsung Electronics, Nanya Technology and Micron Technology.

SanDisk has been hurt by falling prices for NAND memory chips, a type of flash memory the company makes for consumer gadgets like music players and digital cameras. But a Goldman Sachs analyst said key intellectual property rights associated with the chips give the SanDisk more value than the market has recognized.

Nvidia has (according to sources) infringed a patent regarding PCI prefetch held by OPTi and although OPTi no longer makes PC chips, they now license intellectual property. Nvidia didn't come to agreeable terms with OPTi and has to remove the PCI prefetch feature from its chipsets.

SanDisk may have just concluded a multibillion-dollar patent licensing lawsuit with Samsung which could determine the future of both SanDisk and the flash industry at large. As SanDisk considers a US$5.8 billion takeover offer by the flash giant, private arbitration has given Sandisk rights to a technology that may well hold the future of flash memory.

As it did in Round One, Broadcom has prevailed in Round Two of a GPS patent dispute with SiRF Technology, as a US ITC (International Trade Commission) judge Friday ruled that SiRF products infringe six patents belonging to Global Locate, a wholly owned Broadcom subsidiary.

Are Qualcomm patent royalties an unfair tax on cellphone makers? Or have they helped the industry? Those questions are at the heart of a high-stakes trial that begins in a U.S. courtroom in Delaware Wednesday. Cellphone giant Nokia, which says it has paid more than US$1 billion in royalties to Qualcomm since the 1990s, believes it is paying too much.

Japanese LED maker Nichia Corporation has filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Germany against its Korean rival, Seoul Semiconductor Co. Ltd. The lawsuit claims that Seoul's Acriche series white LED product infringes the Nichia patent EP(DE)622858.

Seoul Semiconductor has a confident position to Nichia's assertion regarding to patent infringement because Acriche uses different technology from Nichia’s patent range.

In two separate cases, the companies accused each other of falsely claiming to hold patents that were essential to the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) 3G (Third-Generation) standard. Vendors who make equipment that complies with the standard must pay licensing fees to the developers who contribute patents to it.

Applied Materials' belief of non-infringement is based in part on differences between the SunFab tandem junction technology (as verified by scientific analyses such as Raman spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy) and the claims of the Neuchatel patent.

OC Oerlikon, the world's biggest maker of thin-film solar panel equipment, filed a complaint against Sunfilm AG in a Dusseldorf court alleging the German rival infringed on its patents.