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."

"As a young company we are just now developing our patent portfolio, but already Broadcom holds 22 allowed United States patents and has about 350 additional U.S. patent applications pending, covering the many cutting edge technologies that we have developed and are taking to market," said Nicholas. He added that the "notion that we need to misappropriate Intel's technology to compete is nonsense."

"It is widely recognized in the industry and investment community that Broadcom, not Intel, is the leader in digital cable TV, cable modem, Gigabit Ethernet, home networking, and other key 21st Century communications IC technologies," said the angry CEO. "Intel's allegations are an insult to the more than 1,000 Broadcom engineers who work day and night to develop these technologies."

Nicholas noted that Intel had been an early investor in Broadcom, and he asserted that the new lawsuit was "just the latest in a troubling practice by Intel to rely on litigation as a standard business tactic to slow not only Broadcom but any competitor who poses a serious threat to Intel in the marketplace."

An immediate response by Intel to those charges was not available this morning.

Intel's suit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Delaware, follows moves by the company last March to win an injunction in the Superior Court of California against several former employees from joining Broadcom. The ex-Intel employees were reportedly working on key projects within Intel's Level One Communications subsidiary, which supplies transceivers, hub ICs, and telecommunications chips. Intel acquired Level One last year for about $1.2 billion.

Broadcom's Nicholas said, "Much of Intel's complaint is simply a rehash of allegations brought in another lawsuit earlier this year, in which Intel attempted to block Broadcom's employment of three former Intel employees, described by the court as 'three of the brightest, most capable engineers and managers available." In that ongoing case, the court has already rejected Intel's primary objective, which was to remove these engineers from their current jobs at Broadcom and thereby retard our ability to compete with Intel."

The Broadcom executive said the Aug. 30 lawsuit contains a "vague set of generic patent infringement claims that fail to identify even one specific Broadcom product that allegedly infringes [upon Intel's technology rights]. In fact, Intel made no effort to give us any prior notice of these patents or to discuss with us which Broadcom products allegedly infringe them," Nicholas complained.

He said four of the patent claims in the latest suit related to Broadcom's implementation of "ubiquitous" MPEG-2 standards that obsoleted Intel's Digital Video Interactive product line. And another patent claim on chip packaging technology was invalid because Broadcom uses third-party assembly companies that package chips in standard ball-grid arrays (BGAs).

"In sum, we intend to defend ourselves vigorously in this matter, and we expect to prevail," Nicholas said.