Judge Leonard Stark recently issued a claim construction opinion for patents relating generally to programmable logic devices and clock management for dynamic integrated circuits. Plaintiff Intellectual Ventures brought suit against several circuit companies, and after settlement with several defendants, only Altera and Xilinx remain. The Court held a Markman hearing in May, and Judge Stark has now construed the following terms, adopting the plaintiffs’ proposals for all but three terms for which he adopted a modified versions of the defendants’ proposals:
– “application specific field programmable gate array (‘ASFPGA’)”
– “fixed functional unit(s)”
– “bus interface(s)”
– “peripheral component interconnect”
– “application specific integrated circuit (‘ASIC’)”
– “during normal operation of the ASIC”
– “complements”
– “configured to”
– “individually programmable”
– “reconfigurable processor core”
– “whole processor unit(s)”
– “a controller having a plurality of clock outputs each coupled to a respective clock input of one of the whole processor units, wherein the controller is configured to independently vary a clock frequency of each whole processor unit”
– “each module having a defined function”
– “power-down” and “power-up”
Intellectual Ventures I LLC, et al. v. Altera Corp., et al., C.A. No. 10-1065-LPS, Memorandum Opinion at 4-22 (D. Del. July 26, 2013).
Delaware IP Law Blog 