Micron and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) said they have reached a settlement around all of their disputes worldwide. The companies will now withdraw their complaints against each other and UMC will make a one-time (undisclosed) payment to Micron. After that, the companies noted they look forward to “engaging in mutual business cooperation opportunities.”
Semiconductor Micron has over 47,000 lifetime patents granted, with significant investment in leading edge manufacturing and processes. Semiconductor foundry UMC produces for the electronics industry. It has 12 fabs with a combined capacity of almost 800,000 wafers per month.
The two companies have been embroiled in patent disputes since at least 2017. A bit after, UMC secured an injunction against the sale of certain Micron Technology products in China. UMC had, together with Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit, earlier filed patent infringement lawsuits against Micron in mainland China courts in January, covering specific memory applications related to DDR4, SSD and memory used in graphics cards.
Micron said the suits came in retaliation to criminal indictments filed by Taiwan authorities against UMC and some of its employees and a civil lawsuit filed by Micron against UMC and Jinhua in the US, for the misappropriation of Micron trade secrets. In November 2018. The US Department of Justice issued indictments against UMC, Jinhua and the three former employees of Micron's Taiwan unit for conspiracy to commit trade secret theft, economic espionage and related crimes.
Euronews noted that the US last year imposed a fine on UMC of USD 60 million for stealing Micron designs and sharing them with Jinhua, which was building a memory chip manufacturing plant. UMC said at the time that management had been unaware of the actions of the three employees that had previously worked for Micron. As part of the guilty plea, the DoJ dismissed the other allegations against UMC, including conspiracy to commit economic espionage. The US also indicted Jinhua for allegedly using the trade secrets in its chip designs. The company denied any wrongdoing.
