!063094 Patent injunction requests can be tricky


    Court injunctions are a useful tool in patent infringement lawsuit cases.
Make sure you have a good case before you ask for one, however.  From the
June 20 edition of Electronic News, page 64.

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    In the ongoing patent litigation by Xilinx against Altera in Northern
California U.S. District Court here, Judge Ronald Whyte has denied a
preliminary injunction Xilinx had sought to enjoin Altera's sales of
Altera's FLEX product, pending trial of the suit.

    Xilinx filed suit against Altera last year regarding its Freeman field
programmable gate array patent, covering the master-slace feature in Xilinx
parts allowing a master FPGA to configure slave FPGAs, and the Carter special
interconnect patent, covering an interconnect joining neighboring configurable
logic elements with the FPGA.

    In his ruling, Judge Whyte said, "a preliminary injunction is considered
a drastic and extraordinary remedy that is not routinely granted".  Judge
Whyte said Xilinx has the burden of showing that it would suffer irreparable
harm if Altera continued to sell its FLEX line pending trial.

    Judge Whyte was unconvinced that Xilinx would suffer such harm by
continued sales of Altera's products that allegedly violate Xilinx's patent
because, in part, Xilinx's market share has increased since Altera introduced
FLEX.



Greg Aharonian
Internet Patent News Service