Altera Down 10% on Losing Patent Suit to Rival Xilinx

Specialty chipmaker

Altera

(ALTR) - Get Report

was down 9.5% in preopen

Island

trading on word late Friday that the company lost a patent infringement suit brought by rival

Xilinx

(XLNX) - Get Report

.

The verdict concerned Altera's FLEX 8000 Programmable Logic Device family of chips. Altera said it would appeal. Xilinx was down 2.8%.