The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit denied a motion by the vendors—including Qualcomm Inc., Freescale Semiconductor Inc. and Spansion LLC—that would have stayed the orders barring importation, pending an appeal, Tessera said.

In May, the ITC issued a limited exclusion order prohibiting the import of chips from several companies it determined infringe two packaging patents held by Tessera. That ruling overturned a December 2008 decision by an administrative law judge.

As recently as last month, the impact of the ITC imposed ban—which applies to a broad range of chips using fine-pitch BGA packages— remained unclear. The ban touches everything from high-profile products such as the Amazon Kindle to emerging high-growth products such as netbooks as well as mainstream cellphones, set-top boxes, digital cameras and a world of embedded systems such as industrial controls.

In addition to Freescale, Qualcomm and Spansion, other companies impacted by the ban include ATI Technologies (now part of AMD) and ST Microelectronics N.V., Tessera said.