Broadcom Corp. hasn’t lost the litigious bug entirely.
Take the Irvine chipmaker’s recent salvo in its fight with San Diego’s Qualcomm Inc.
Thanks to a complaint filed by Broadcom in May, the U.S. International Trade Commission is looking into whether Qualcomm has engaged in unfair trade practices.
In the complaint, Broadcom had asked the commission to bar imports from Taiwan of chips based on Qualcomm technology. Broadcom also is seeking a permanent order to bar the imports.
The move came a month after Broadcom filed two complaints in federal court alleging Qualcomm violated Broadcom patents. Broadcom is seeking damages and an injunction in the sale of those chips.
The case harkens back to three-year long Broadcom battle with Plano, Texas-based Microtune Inc., where the two companies traded lawsuits. Same goes for Broadcom’s extended battle with Intel Corp.
It wasn’t until Alan E. “Lanny” Ross, a Broadcom director, took over as chief executive following the 2003 exit of founding chief Henry Nicholas that Broadcom’s tone seemed to change.
Ross decided it would be better for Broadcom to settle its spats with other chipmakers instead of paying high legal bills. He also set out on acquisitions to build up Broadcom’s patent holdings.
In the past year, Broadcom has set itself up to be more aggressive in court.
Early last year, Broadcom bought a portfolio of chip patents from Austin, Texas-based Cirrus Logic Inc. It then sued rival Agere Systems Inc. of Allentown, Pa., for allegedly violating the patents.
The company has filed at least 12 patent suits since 1996, according to Menlo Park-based legal research company iPriori Inc.
Datallegro: Intel Inside
I don’t have the best track record of picking the next best thing when it comes to Orange County’s roster of startup companies.
But considering the backing of Aliso Viejo-based Datallegro Inc., I might be safe in saying they’re one of them.
Datallegro sells a data storage appliance with its proprietary software on it. The company tunes and configures the software for optimal performance with the hardware.
The company recently raised $15 million in a second round of funding, adding Intel to its list of investors. Intel is the biggest name yet to kick in money to the startup.
The round was led by Austin, Texas-based Adams Capital Management, with prior investors Santa Monica-based Palomar Ventures and Venrock Associates of Menlo Park taking part.
It’s hard to tell whether Intel’s signing on is a testament to Datallegro’s technology, the fund-raising prowess of Stuart Frost, the company’s chief executive, or both.
Datallegro’s software is designed to bridge new and older data. As businesses take on more data each day, old sales records and other information often are offloaded to a specialized database, like the kind offered by Dayton, Ohio-based NCR Corp. and others.
The company’s software is designed to work with database applications made by Oracle Corp. and others.
Frost has headed a startup before. He founded Britain’s Select Software Tools Ltd. in 1988, which he led to a public offering in 1996. He has a degree in computer engineering from Nottingham University in England and began his career in 1983 as a programmer and systems analyst.
Speaking of Startups
For how hard Michael Hajeck had to look for his first round of funding, the chief executive and founder of Aliso Viejo-based SiliconSystems Inc. didn’t seem to be having much trouble raising a second round.
While Hajeck kept mum on the amount, he did throw me a bone and say it was “eight figures” and would sustain the company for three years.
SiliconSystems closed its first round of funding, worth $3 million to $5 million, last year.
Santa Monica’s Rustic Canyon Partners and San Diego’s Shepherd Ventures joined Corona del Mar-based Miramar Venture Partners, an existing investor, in the latest round.
SiliconSystems, which makes so-called “solid-state” storage products, isn’t profitable yet, according to Hajeck.
The company’s product looks like a 2.5-inch disk drive. Instead of the platters and heads found in disk drives, SiliconSystems’ devices are full of memory chips.
Like disk drives, they have a controller,a circuit board with chips,for connecting the device to a computer. They’re designed to store small amounts of data, sometimes in hot, cold, dusty or otherwise tough settings. The devices are used in medical instruments, video poker machines, electronic voting gear, corporate voice mail systems and military equipment.
Hajeck is an alumnus of Santa Ana-based memory products maker SimpleTech Inc.
