Irvine-based chipmaker Broadcom Corp. said Wednesday it won an early round in a patent dispute with onetime acquisition target Emulex Corp. of Costa Mesa.
Broadcom said it had a “favorable” initial ruling in the case, which was filed in October 2009.
U.S. District Court Judge James Selna issued a ruling earlier this month following what’s known as a Markman hearing, a first step to setting out the terms of arguing claims in patent litigation.
During a Markman hearing, a judge looks at evidence and defines the meaning of words used in patent claims, which helps determine later down the line if patent infringement took place. It’s sometimes also called a claim construction hearing.
“The ruling reinforces our infringement case,” Broadcom said in a statement.
A spokeswoman for Emulex said the company “has a policy of vigorously
defending the company against assertions of this kind.”
The company declined to comment further.
Broadcom in its lawsuit said Emulex’s products infringe on nine of its patents for chips related to high-speed networking and data storage technologies.
Broadcom is seeking damages and an injunction against Emulex.
The suit covers technologies that brought Broadcom head to head with Emulex, a maker of electronics for data storage networks.
In late 2008, Broadcom offered $764 million for Emulex in private and then went public with its offer in early 2009.
Emulex rejected the offer several times, prompting Broadcom to up its ante to $912 million, which also was rejected. Broadcom dropped its bid in mid-2009.
The acquisition bid and ensuing lawsuits stem from the emerging market for what’s called converged networking—seen by some as big game in a few years.
Fibre channel over Ethernet, as the technology is known, is set to bridge speedy, specialized data storage networks and everyday networks of servers and desktop computers, cutting down on energy costs.
