Google confirmed on Thursday that it had added 1,023 more IBM patents to its technology arsenal to fend off legal attacks by rivals such as Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp.
The purchases added to the 1,000 or so patents the California-based Internet firm bought from IBM in July and reportedly ranged from mobile software to computer hardware and processes.
Google spokesman Jim Prosser said that the patent transfers had taken place but would not disclose financial terms of the deal or specifics regarding the intellectual property.
The push by Google to strengthen its patent portfolio comes as the fight for dominance in the booming smartphone market increasingly involves lawsuits claiming infringement of patented technology.
Smartphone titan HTC Corp (宏達電) this month ramped up its patent war with Apple with the help of ammunition provided by Google, the force behind Android mobile software.
Technology giants have taken to routinely pounding one another with patent lawsuits. Apple has accused HTC and other smartphone makers using Google’s Android mobile operating system of infringing on Apple-held patents.
Some of the nine patents that HTC got from Google had belonged to Motorola Mobility, which Google is buying for US$12.5 billion in cash.
Motorola Mobility’s trove of patents was a key motivation for Google to defend Android. The US maker of smartphones and touchscreen tablet computers has more than 17,000 issued patents and another 7,500 pending.
ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控) yesterday launched its second testing facility in San Jose, California, to expand advanced chip testing capacity such as burn-in testing to satisfy customers’ rising engineering needs for emerging semiconductor applications, such as artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC). ISE Labs Inc, a fully owned subsidiary of ASE, would operate the advanced testing facility. When added to its first facility in nearby Fremont, ISE would double its available research-and-development lab and business space to 150,000m2 in hopes of boosting the US semiconductor supply chain, the company said in a statement. “As the semiconductor manufacturing supply chain reshoring
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