GlobalFoundries Sues IBM, Says Trade Secrets Were Unlawfully Given To Japan's Rapidus (reuters.com) 4
Chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries said today it had filed a lawsuit against IBM, accusing it of unlawfully sharing confidential intellectual property and trade secrets. From a report: New York-based GlobalFoundries said in its complaint that IBM had shared IP and trade secrets with Rapidus, a new state-backed Japanese consortium that IBM is working with to develop and produce cutting-edge two-nanometre chips. It also asserted that IBM had unlawfully disclosed and misused its IP with Intel, noting that IBM had announced in 2021 it would collaborate with Intel on next-generation chip technology. "IBM is unjustly receiving potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing income and other benefits," GlobalFoundries said in a statement. IBM pushed back in an emailed statement to Reuters saying: "GlobalFoundries filed this meritless lawsuit after a court rejected the company's attempt to dismiss IBM's legitimate fraud and breach of contract claims. Their allegations are entirely baseless, and we are confident that the court will agree."
Re:Fishing expedition? (Score:4, Interesting)
It would almost have to be. What exact GF trade secrets does IBM even have that are relevant to the IBM collaborations with Intel and Rapidus? GF hasn't fabbed anything major for IBM recently (that I know of). POWER moved to TSMC some time ago. GF hasn't moved beyond their 12/14nm node for high-performance products (not sure where they are with their FDX nodes at the moment, but they definitely don't have a node competitive with TSMC N7, much less N5-family nodes or N3).
Re: (Score:2)
Not a bad idea (Score:1)