Broadcom Sues Emulex for Patent Infringement

Chipmaker Broadcom Corp said this week it sued Emulex Corp for patent infringement, following Broadcom’s unsuccessful bid earlier this year to buy the storage technology company.

Broadcom said it filed a complaint with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, saying Emulex infringes 10 of its patents related to high-speed data and storage networking including Fibre Channel over Ethernet, an emerging technology that helps boost network speeds.

Broadcom said it was seeking both monetary damages and injunctive relief to stop Emulex’s infringement.

Broadcom withdrew its $912 million bid in July after Emulex rejected it as too low. Emulex was not immediately available for comment.

Broadcom said the patents in question were part of its portfolio of more than 3,580 U.S. patents and 1,350 foreign patents, and that the move was consistent with its history of protecting its intellectual property.

In April another Broadcom rival, Qualcomm Inc, agreed to pay the company $891 million to settle a patent infringement case which lasted about four years.

“As we developed our plans for the Fibre Channel over Ethernet market, we discovered that Emulex is infringing multiple Broadcom patents in an effort to use Broadcom technology to compete against both our existing and future products,” David Rosmann, Broadcom’s vice president for Intellectual Property Litigation, said in a statement.

(Reporting by Ritsuko Ando and Sinead Carew; Editing by Carol Bishopric and Richard Chang)