GlobalFoundries accused TSMC of patent infringement involving 16 patents. Apple is cited in three of them.
GlobalFoundries Patent Lawsuit
GlobalFoundries filed the lawsuits in Germany and the United States, and seeks to have imports of iPhones banned. Gregg Bartlett, senior vice president, engineering and technology at GlobalFoundries, shared:
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.
TSMC is the chip manufacturer that produces Apple’s A-series chips. Besides Apple, other tech companies are also named in the lawsuits:
- Foundry: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd. (TSMC)
- Fabless chip designers: Apple, Broadcom, Mediatek, nVidia, Qualcomm, Xilinx
- Electronic component distributors: Avnet/EBV, Digi-key, Mouser
- Consumer product: Arista, ASUS, BLU, Cisco, Google, HiSense, Lenovo, Motorola, TCL, OnePlus