Altera, Xilinx Down After Patent Infringement Ruling

Shares of

Altera

(ALTR) - Get Report

were down this morning on news that the company lost a patent infringement lawsuit brought by rival chipmaker

Xilinx

(XLNX) - Get Report

.

Altera said in a statement released late Friday that it expects affected sales of its Flex 8000 products to account for $30 million, or about 2% of the company's 2000 revenue. The company expects Flex 8000 sales to be flat or declining in 2001.

Shares of specialty chipmaker Altera were recently down 1.9%, or 56 cents, to $29.81, while Xilinx was down 3.5%, or $2.19, to $61.13 in

Nasdaq

trading. Altera has traded as low as $27.06 this morning.

The jury verdict found that Altera's Flex 8000 programmable logic device family, which was introduced in 1993, infringed on two Xilinx patents. Altera said it will file a motion to reverse the verdict. If the motion is denied, the company will appeal the verdict. Damages, if any, will be assessed in a separate trial that hasn't been scheduled.

Altera also said that in other rulings, the court found a number of claims in one of the Xilinx patents, as well as the main claim of the other patent, to be invalid.