AMD settles OPTi lawsuit for $32 million

AMD has settled a patent lawsuit with OPTi for $32 million. San Francisco Business Times report this is OPTi's biggest legal victory, in the last decade the company has secured roughly $70 million in settlements and judgements. Until 2002 OPTi developed chips for laptops and computers, but these days the firm is only three heads strong and exists largely to protect its intellectual property.

OPTi Inc. (“OPTi” or the “Company”) (OTCBB:OPTI) entered into a Settlement and License Agreement and a Litigation Settlement and License Agreement with Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (“AMD”) on April 30, 2010. The agreements settle both pending lawsuits that the Company filed against AMD in the Eastern District of Texas.

On November 15, 2006, the Company announced that it filed a complaint against AMD in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, for infringement of U.S. patent No. 5,710,906, U.S. patent No. 5,813,036, and U.S. patent No. 6,405,291, all entitled “Predictive Snooping of Cache Memory for Master-Initiated Accesses”. On July 3, 2007, the Company announced that it had filed a complaint against AMD and other defendants in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, for infringement of U.S. patent No. 5,944,807 and U.S. patent No. 6,098,141, both entitled “Compact ISA-Bus Interface.” The complaints alleged that AMD infringes the patents by making, selling, and offering for sale products based on and incorporating Predictive Snooping technology and the Low Pin Count Interface Specification in various of its products and inducing and contributing to the infringement of the patents by others.

In exchange for the Company agreeing to dismiss with prejudice its lawsuit against AMD related to OPTi’s Predictive Snooping technology and the grant to AMD of a non-exclusive, royalty free, fully paid-up license of OPTi’s patents, AMD will make five quarterly payments to the Company totaling $32,000,000. The Company will receive $4,000,000 within fourteen days of the signing of the settlement agreement and four payments of $7,000,000 will be received on July 1, 2010, October 1, 2010, January 1, 2011 and April 1, 2011. In exchange for the Company agreeing to dismiss with prejudice its lawsuit against AMD related to OPTi’s Compact ISA-Bus Interface technology and the grant to AMD of a non-exclusive, royalty free, fully paid-up license of the OPTi patents U.S. patent No. 5,944,807, U.S. patent No. 6,098,141, and U.S. patent No. 7,523,245, AMD will make one payment of $3,000,000 to the Company within fourteen days of the signing of the settlement agreement.

OPTi has a long-standing commitment to distributing all excess proceeds to its shareholders, and the Company remains dedicated to continuing this commitment. Once the Company has completed all of the required analysis, it will make further announcements on the timing and amount of any distributions.