Transmeta Surges on Intel Suit

An Intel spokesperson said the company had not seen the complaint yet and could not comment.

Santa Clara, Calif.-based Transmeta began its life in the mid-1990s making low-power chips for mobile devices based on the x86 instruction set used by Intel processors. During the past few years, Transmeta has changed its business model, focusing instead on licensing its intellectual property to other chipmakers and providing engineering and designing services.

The company had $72.7 million in revenue last year, with licensees including Sony(SNE Quote), Toshiba and Fujitsu.

Wednesday's suit against Intel appears to mark a new turn in the company's IP strategy involving a more aggressive litigation approach. The company's latest quarterly earnings report does not mention any other ongoing patent-litigation suits.

"As part of our business decision last year to increasingly focus on monetizing our IP through technology licensing, we understood that in some cases, we might need to pursue enforcement through the courts," CEO Arthur Swift said in a statement.