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Thursday, July 29, 2010
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Intel and Micron Load Up on Patents 5/27/2009 9:32:53 AM Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. have long bet on the market for semiconductors. They also are stacking chips on the table when it comes to patents.
In the past 12 months, Intel edged ahead of Micron in a ranking of the chip sector issued by Patent Board, a Chicago research firm. That shift largely reflects the fact that 2,007 U.S. patents were issued to Intel in the period -- 30% more than the prior 12 months -- compared with 1,661 for Micron.
Intel Corp. and Micron Technology Inc. have long bet on the market for semiconductors. They also are stacking chips on the table when it comes to patents.
In the past 12 months, Intel edged ahead of Micron in a ranking of the chip sector issued by Patent Board, a Chicago research firm. That shift largely reflects the fact that 2,007 U.S. patents were issued to Intel in the period -- 30% more than the prior 12 months -- compared with 1,661 for Micron.
On the surface, Intel's ascension sounds like a slam dunk. After all, the Santa Clara, Calif., company has six times Micron's annual revenues and spends more than eight times as much on research and development.
Micron, an Idaho upstart known for wrestling with larger companies, has turned its Boise headquarters into a veritable mecca for intellectual property. Micron claimed Patent Board's No. 1 rating in the sector from 2002 through 2005 and boasts the largest cumulative portfolio of patents among chip makers.
Micron remains ahead of Intel on some of the research firm's measures of patent quality, which are largely based on citations of a company's patents by other companies or by researchers.
"As our portfolio becomes bigger we are increasingly less interested in more patent quantity," said D. Mark Durcan, Micron's chief operating officer. "We are very focused on quality."
The two companies are more allies than competitors. Intel dominates sales of microprocessors, the electronic brains of most computers. Micron is known for data-storage devices called DRAMs, or dynamic random access memory chips. They are working together to jointly make another kind of memory chip, known as NAND flash.
They share similar views on the role of patents. Some companies use patents to try to keep competitors out of their turf. Others, such as Qualcomm Inc. or Rambus Inc., use royalties from licensing patents as a revenue stream.
Intel and Micron see another purpose: to preserve their own freedom of action. If they are first to patent a new way to improve their chips, competitors will have a hard time stopping them from using it.
"We want to be able to put good ideas into our products and not have to worry about being sued," said David Simon, Intel's chief patent counsel. Mr. Simon said chip patents can take five years to be granted, so recent statistics don't reflect recent inventions at Intel.
The No. 3 company on the list, Broadcom Corp., gained 661 patents in the 12-month period, up 57% from a year earlier. That total, combined with high quality ratings on its patents, helped place Broadcom ahead of larger companies such as International Business Machines Corp. 
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