Ulrich Schumacher, former Chief Executive Officer of Infineon Technologies AG, has been charged in a bribery case, the Munich Public Prosecutor said.

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.”

Former United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) chairman Robert Tsao and former vice chairman John Hsuan were found not guilty by the Taiwan High Court yesterday of illegal investments in a Chinese company.

Chip maker Cypress Semiconductor said late Friday that the US Department of Justice has closed its investigation into in a global price-fixing scheme involving a form of computer memory.

Infineon said on Saturday that Fairchild Semiconductor's patent lawsuit against the German chip maker had been filed in response to a similar case brought by Infineon against its US rival. The two companies are in a legal tussle over so called power chips that regulate electricity supply in computers, sold by Infineon under its CoolMOS and OptiMOS as well as Infineon IGBT and CanPak brands.

A federal judge in Seattle has ordered Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to testify in a class action lawsuit against Microsoft that alleges the company misled consumers in a marketing campaign for Windows Vista.

Last year, the ITC ruled that certain new models of 3G wireless handsets with Qualcomm chipsets could not be imported because they infringed on a Broadcom patent. An appellate court stayed the ban in September, pending appeal. On Tuesday, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the ITC's ruling about the patent's validity. However, it reversed the import ban because Broadcom filed a complaint only against Qualcomm. The ITC could not ban products made by "downstream manufacturers."

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.

Wi-LAN Inc., the Canadian technology licensing company, has added LG, the Korean electronics giant, to a growing list of big industry players that it is taking to court. LG joins Motorola, Research in Motion and UTStarCom to the group of wireless handset makers that Wi-LAN believes are infringing its wireless patents.