Competition strategy? UMC accused Silicon Integrated System Corp. of infringing its IP rights in the U.S.

Source: Economic Daily News 12/06/2000

Translated by Y. W. Hsiao

 

   UMC, a leader in semiconductor industry, filed an action with the Federal Court in California against SiS on December 5, 2000 claiming that SiS systemically abused UMC’s IP rights including patent infringement, theft of trade secrets, confidentiality violation and unfair competition so that SiS could enter into the wafer manufacturing industry.

 

   SiS - a former company designing Integrated Circuit - is UMC’s former client, has recently been active in the establishment of wafer manufacturing foundry. It tries to get rid of the restrictions put on by the upstream wafer manufacturing foundries by means of producing sufficient products. The increased production caused the wafer manufacturing foundries cooperating with SiS concern, which led to SiS reducing supply and endangered their wafer delivery.

 

   The industry infers that the action filed by UMC is probably the first step of its competition strategy and its selection of the U.S. as the place to file the action may be due to a larger accusation effect resulting from the following factors: the U.S. is the main consuming market of IC and patent issues are mostly emphasized in the U.S