Altera, Xilinx Down After Patent Infringement Ruling
Shares of
Altera
(ALTR) - Get Altair Engineering Inc. Report
were down this morning on news that the company lost a patent infringement lawsuit brought by rival chipmaker
Xilinx
(XLNX) - Get Xilinx Inc. Report
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.
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.
