U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Confirms Cypress SRAM Patent Asserted in Cypress's ITC Action Against GSI Technology

“The Patent and Trademark Office’s re-examination review was exhaustive,” said Dana Nazarian, executive vice president of Cypress’s Memory Products Division. “The ‘477 patent was re-examined in light of all of the prior art submitted by GSI in its re-examination request, as well as prior art used by GSI in its defense of the ITC investigation. The PTO ruling confirms what we’ve known all along – that the ‘477 patent is rock-solid.

“In a November 2011 press release, Lee-Lean Shu, the CEO of GSI, said ‘we are confident that completion of the re-examination will result in a final rejection of these claims,’” Nazarian continued. “The PTO not only reaffirmed the ‘477 patent, it allowed 64 new claims. It is now clear that Mr. Shu’s prediction about the ‘477 patent was wrong.”

In June 2011, Cypress filed a complaint with the ITC alleging that GSI’s SigmaQuad-II, SigmaQuad-III and SigmaDDR SRAM families infringe four Cypress SRAM patents. The case was later expanded to include GSI’s standard synchronous and ZBT SRAMs, as well as a proprietary product made by GSI for its largest customer. The complaint seeks an exclusion order from the ITC that would prevent the importation of all infringing GSI SRAMs. The trial has been completed, and the ITC is expected to rule on this case in late July.