Apple, dozens of others sued for patent infringement

Another day, another lawsuit. A company called Keranos — based in Austin, Texas — has filed a lawsuit against Apple and about a billion other companies for patent infringement.

Named in the lawsuit, in addition to Apple, are: Analog Devices, Alcatel-Lucent, Atheros,  Austriamicrosystems, EM Microelectronic, Seiko Epson, Freescale Semiconductor, Infineon, IBM. Intel, Microchip Technology, Micronas Semiconductor, Nanya, National Semiconductor, NEC, NXP, Oki, Rohm Semiconductor, Qualcomm, Renesas, Samsung, Texas Instruments and Toshiba, TSMC,, Ubicom, Vanguard, Vis Micro, Winbond Electronics and Zilog. The suit was filed in the Marshall Division of the Eastern District of Texas, the lawsuit capital of the world.

According to “TechEye.net” (http://www.techeye.net/business/intel-apple-practically-entire-semi-industry-sued), Keranos wants financial restitution for the companies in question breaching its patents that involve: a self-aligned, split gate EPROM process; a self-aligned split gate EPROM; and a mthod for programming a floating gate memory devices.

The lawsuit says that: “Apple infringed… one or more claims of the patent by making…products and devices which embody the patented invention, including among other devices, integrated circuits using embedded flash memory embodied in discrete form, wafer form, or incorporated within larger systems on printed circuit boards.”