Following
similar suits filed in May against AMD,
MediaTek, and Samsung, plaintiffs
Continental Circuits LLC (as patent holder) and
Continental Circuits of Texas LLC (as exclusive licensee) have
sued Apple (
6:21-cv-01049) and TSMC (
2:21-cv-00383) over a group of expired patents generally
related to circuit boards. This campaign made headlines last year
when a judge in the District of Arizona
issued an order granting in part a motion filed by defendants
Intel and Ibiden to compel
litigation funding discovery.
The same four patents at issue in the suits filed earlier this
year against AMD, MediaTek, and Samsung (
7,501,582;
8,278,560;
8,581,105;
9,374,912) are asserted against Apple (sued in the Western
District of Texas) and TSMC (the Eastern District of Texas). They
generally relate to circuit boards with a "roughened surface
structure" to facilitate joining layers in a multilayer
electrical device. The defendants are accused of infringement
through