SANTA CLARA, Calif. -- Intel Corp. here today announced it has reached an out-of-court settlement in its bitter suit against Broadcom Corp. over alleged trade secret violations in the communications chip space.
At the same time, Broadcom of Irvine, Calif. also settled its cross-complaint against Intel. Both companies expressed satisfaction with the terms of the settlement agreement, which are confidential.
Intel originally filed the suit in the California Superior Court in March of 2000, claiming that Broadcom was engaged in unfair competition and alleged theft of trade secrets. At the time, Broadcom hired a few key engineers away from Intel's Level One Communications subsidiary, a supplier of local-area networking chips.
In August, Intel expanded its legal assault against Broadcom, charging that Broadcom was involved in a "carefully crafted plan" to base its business around Intel's communications chip technology (see Aug. 30 story). At that time, Intel claimed that Broadcom infringed upon a wide range of technologies, such as "smart networking products, motion picture decoding chips, and even the packages which Broadcom uses to sell its chips," according to documents filed by the chip giant.
A month later, Broadcom chief executive today fired back at Intel, accusing the world's largest chip company of resorting to "specious litigation in the courts rather than competition in the marketplace (see Sept. 5 story). Broadcom CEO and president Henry T. Nicholas III called Intel's claims "provocative" and said he was making an exception to a policy of not publicly commenting on pending litigation because of "outrageous allegations and statements made by Intel."
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