GlobalFoundries Sues TSMC Over Patent Infringement; Apple, Qualcomm, Others Named Defendants
by Anton Shilov on August 26, 2019 12:30 PM EST- Posted in
- Semiconductors
- Apple
- GlobalFoundries
- Qualcomm
- Broadcom
- Cisco
- NVIDIA
- TSMC
GlobalFoundries has filed a lawsuit against TSMC and its clients in the USA and Germany alleging the world’s largest contract maker of semiconductors of infringing 16 of its patents. Among the defendants, GlobalFoundries named numerous fabless developers of chips, including Apple, NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and many others. The plaintiff seeks damages from TSMC and wants courts to ban shipments of products that use semiconductors allegedly infringing its patents into the USA and Germany.
GlobalFoundries says that TSMC infringed 16 of its patents covering various aspects of chip manufacturing (details), including those chips that use FinFET transistors. In particular, the company claims that TSMC’s 7 nm, 10 nm, 12 nm, 16 nm, and 28 nm nodes use its intellectual property. Considering that these manufacturing processes are used to make more than a half of TSMC’s chips (based on revenue share), the potential damages being claimed by GlobalFoundries may reach the billions of dollars.
GlobalFoundries filed complaints in the US International Trade Commission (ITC), the U.S. Federal District Courts in the Districts of Delaware and the Western District of Texas, and the Regional Courts of Dusseldorf, and Mannheim in Germany. In its lawsuits GlobalFoundries demands damages from TSMC and wants courts to bar products that allegedly infringe its rights from being imported into the U.S. and Germany.
Owing to the legal requirement to file claims against the companies who are actually infringing on GlobalFoundries' patents within the United States – TSMC itself is based in Taiwan, so their manufacturing operation is not subject to US jurisdiction – the suit also includes several of TSMC's customers, all of whom import chips into the US that are built using the technology under dispute. Among the big names accused of infringing upon GlobalFoundries' IP are Apple, ASUS, Broadcom, Cisco, Google, NVIDIA, Lenovo, and Motorola. Accordingly, if the courts were to take GlobalFoundries’ side and issue an injunction, such an action would prevent importing a wide swath of tech products, including Apple’s iPhones, NVIDIA GeForce-based graphics cards, smartphones running Qualcomm's SoCs made by TSMC, various routers, as well as devices (e.g., PCs, smartphones) by ASUS and Lenovo containing chips made by TSMC.
| GlobalFoundries vs. TSMC et al | ||||
| Fabless Chip Designers | Consumer Product Manufacturers | Electronic Component Distributors | ||
| Apple Broadcom Mediatek NVIDIA Qualcomm Xilinx |
Arista ASUS BLU Cisco HiSense Lenovo Motorola TCL OnePlus |
Avnet/EBV Digi-key Mouser |
||
GlobalFoundries says that it wants to protect its IP investments in the US and Europe. Here is what Gregg Bartlett, SVP of engineering and technology at GlobalFoundries, had to say:
“While semiconductor manufacturing has continued to shift to Asia, GF has bucked the trend by investing heavily in the American and European semiconductor industries, spending more than $15 billion dollars in the last decade in the U.S. and more than $6 billion in Europe's largest semiconductor manufacturing fabrication facility. These lawsuits are aimed at protecting those investments and the US and European-based innovation that powers them. For years, while we have been devoting billions of dollars to domestic research and development, TSMC has been unlawfully reaping the benefits of our investments. This action is critical to halt Taiwan Semiconductor’s unlawful use of our vital assets and to safeguard the American and European manufacturing base."
| GlobalFoundries vs. TSMC et al, GF's Patents in the Cases | ||||
| Title | Patent No. | Inventors | ||
| Bit Cell With Double Patterned Metal Layer Structures | US 8,823,178 | Juhan Kim, Mahbub Rashed | ||
| Semiconductor device with transistor local interconnects | US 8,581,348 | Mahbub Rashed, Steven Soss, Jongwook Kye, Irene Y. Lin, James Benjamin Gullette, Chinh Nguyen, Jeff Kim, Marc Tarabbia, Yuansheng Ma, Yunfei Deng, Rod Augur, Seung-Hyun Rhee, Scott Johnson, Subramani KengeriSuresh Venkatesan | ||
| Semiconductor device with transistor local interconnects | US 9,355,910 | Mahbub Rashed, Irene Y. Lin, Steven Soss, Jeff Kim, Chinh Nguyen, Marc Tarabbia, Scott Johnson, Subramani Kengeri, Suresh Venkatesan | ||
| Introduction of metal impurity to change workfunction of conductive electrodes | US 7,425,497 | Michael P. Chudzik, Bruce B. Doris, Supratik Guha, Rajarao Jammy, Vijay Narayanan, Vamsi K. Paruchuri, Yun Y. Wang,Keith Kwong Hon Wong | ||
| Semiconductor device having contact layer providing electrical connections | US 8,598,633 | Marc Tarabbia, James B. Gullette, Mahbub RashedDavid S. Doman, Irene Y. Lin, Ingolf Lorenz, Larry Ho, Chinh Nguyen, Jeff Kim, Jongwook Kye, Yuansheng MaYunfei Deng, Rod Augur, Seung-Hyun Rhee, Jason E. Stephens, Scott Johnson, Subramani Kengeri, Suresh Venkatesan | ||
| Method of forming a metal or metal nitride interface layer between silicon nitride and copper | US 6,518,167 | Lu You, Matthew S. Buynoski, Paul R. Besser, Jeremias D. Romero, Pin-Chin, Connie Wang, Minh Q. Tran | ||
| Structures of and methods and tools for forming in-situ metallic/dielectric caps for interconnects | US 8,039,966 | Chih-Chao Yang, Chao-Kun Hu | ||
| Introduction of metal impurity to change workfunction of conductive electrodes | US 7,750,418 | Michael P. Chudzik, Bruce B. Doris, Supratik Guha, Rajarao Jammy, Vijay Narayanan, Vamsi K. Paruchuri, Yun Y. Wang, Keith Kwong Hon Wong | ||
| Methods of forming FinFET devices with a shared gate structure | US 8,936,986 | Andy C. Wei, Dae Geun Yang | ||
| Semiconductor device with stressed fin sections | US 8,912,603 | Scott Luning, Frank Scott Johnson | ||
| Multiple dielectric FinFET structure and method | US 7,378,357 | William F. Clark, Jr., Edward J. Nowak | ||
| Bit cell with double patterned metal layer structures | US 9,105,643 | Juhan Kim, Mahbub Rashed | ||
| Complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) device having gate structures connected by a metal gate conductor | US 9,082,877 | Yue Liang, Dureseti Chidambarrao, Brian J. Greene, William K. Henson, Unoh Kwon, Shreesh Narasimha, and Xiaojun Yu | ||
| Hybrid contact structure with low aspect ratio contacts in a semiconductor device | DE 102011002769 | Kai Frohberg, Ralf Richter | ||
| Complementary transistors comprising high-k metal gate electrode structures and epitaxially formed semiconductor materials in the drain and source areas | DE 102011004320 | Gunda Beernink, Markus Lenski | ||
| Semiconductor device with transistor local interconnects | DE 102012219375 | Mahbub Rashed, Irene Y. Lin, Steven Soss, Jeff Kim, Chinh Nguyen, Marc Tarabbia, Scott Johnson, Subramani Kengeri, Suresh Venkatesan | ||
Related Reading:
- GlobalFoundries Sells Off Photomask Assets to Toppan
- Marvell to Acquire Avera Semiconductor from GlobalFoundries
- GlobalFoundries to Sell 300mm New York Fab to ON Semiconductor
- GlobalFoundries to Sell 200-mm Fab 3E to Vanguard, Exits MEMS Business
- AMD Amends Wafer Supply Agreement with GlobalFoundries: 7nm Freed, 12nm+ Targets Set Through 2021
- GlobalFoundries and Chinese Authorities Reconsider Plans
- GlobalFoundries Stops All 7nm Development: Opts To Focus on Specialized Processes
Source: GlobalFoundries
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HStewart - Tuesday, August 27, 2019 - link
I would think your are correct on this, Intel and Samsung likely use different technologies but it is interesting that others are start using 3d technology - but high tech companies do like switch employees back and forth so there is likely could be problem with technology leaks.Zoolook13 - Tuesday, August 27, 2019 - link
I'm sure they have a cross licensing deal with Samsung since their 14/12 nm process is an adapted Samsung process.Regarding the patents, it's 10 years since they were spun off from AMD, most of the AMD-patents are old, many about to or has expired, did you think they stopped developing and patenting after they were spun off ?
FullmetalTitan - Wednesday, August 28, 2019 - link
They wouldn't want to rock the boat with Samsung, as they licensed their 14LPP process and the GloFlo 12LP process evolved from that, seeing as GloFlo plans to continue profiting from that technology in addition to specialty parts like FDSOI and RF processes.Also, Samsung builds their own chips, so they have never been a client of TSMC.
levizx - Monday, August 26, 2019 - link
Bad business decisions? Do you even have any ideas why GloFo scrapped 7nm? To put it simple, they don't have the money to build another fab, so in turn their 7nm will be solely reliant on existing fabs which must also produce 14/12nm as well. They won't ever get more than 10% of Samsung/TSMC's volume, so how do you propose they get their R&D money back while remaining competitive?Kvaern1 - Monday, August 26, 2019 - link
What I find interersting is that all of AMD's and IBM's business combined (which Glofo had) apparently isn't enough to finance development of upto date process nodes anymore.levizx - Monday, August 26, 2019 - link
Why do you find it interesting? IBM gave GloFo money to take their fabs which didn't have much volume in the first place. Expecting anything other than even combined they won't have a tiny fraction of what Samsung and TSMC's volume, therefore not able to support R&D is very much delusional.quadibloc - Tuesday, August 27, 2019 - link
No, it isn't. And pretty soon Samsung will drop out of the race too. It will be just TSMC and Intel, and maybe not both of them for very long. New process nodes are just getting ridiculously expensive. Moores' Law's days are numbered. But it's got a while to go yet.Zoolook13 - Tuesday, August 27, 2019 - link
Samsungs memory business alone is bigger than TSMC, I doubt they are dropping out.Threska - Tuesday, August 27, 2019 - link
Agreed. I think people forget that semiconductors isn't JUST microprocessors. Not everything needs the push towards 7 nm.MandiEd - Saturday, August 31, 2019 - link
Why would they Samsung drop out when their memory division is generating considerably more sales than TSM and Samsung can consolidate the second place just sticking around?In fact, there will be more players in the future as the market demands at least one or two alternatives to TSM and SMIC will eventually catch up with others as they are backed by ambitious Chinese government.
SK Hynix's revenue is comparable with TSM and they are also planning to have a go at Foundry Business. Hell, even Intel may want to try it again.
The problem is that TSM is still a contract manufacturer and its customers can switch to other companies while Intel and Samsung have their products for their fabs.