This acquisition will expand the breadth of Rambus' breakthrough technologies available for licensing with complementary technologies from CRI that include patented innovations and solutions for content protection, network security, anti-counterfeiting and financial services.

Zoom Technologies has signed a licensing pact with chipmaker Qualcomm, allowing the Chinese mobile phone maker to develop and sell 3G devices using Qualcomm's chip patents.

"Shares of MIPS are selling off today because ARM announced a subscription license agreement with Broadcom," said Gary Mobley, an analyst with The Benchmark Company, in a report. "Because of Broadcom's heavy use of MIPS cores, Broadcom is MIPS' largest customer. We estimate Broadcom's royalties paid to MIPS represent 35% of MIPS' royalty revenue, or 15% of total revenue."

This agreement covers the use of Rambus patented innovations in a broad range of logic IC products offered by Renesas Electronics.

Shares of Tessera Technologies, which owns and makes money licensing numerous patents for combing computer chips together, are up 7% at US$22.09 after an appeals court ruled in favor of the company in its suit against Qualcomm, Spansion and STMicroelectronics.

Rambus is giving out another round of subpoenas to all of its friends in the tech industry. Most interesting among the defendants perhaps is Nvidia, who only months ago signed a licensing agreement with Rambus to end an ITC blockade of its products.

With this arrangement, Samsung Electronics gains access to Intellectual Ventures' patent portfolio, which includes IP in a variety of segments "critical" to Samsung's business operations.

Nokia has taken over the Symbian Foundation and announced plans to downsize it and turn it into a licensing organization.

The company's US subsidiaries, Qimonda North America and Qimonda Richmond, have acknowledged the parent's ownership of over 800 patents and patent applications and abandoned claims of over US$2.1 billion against Qimonda. "We will now put all our efforts into continuing to exploit the patent portfolio by licensing and selling individual packages," said Qimonda insolvency administrator Michael Jaffe.

Rambus saw its results improve in the third quarter of 2010 thanks to a licensing deal signed earlier this year with former legal opponent Samsung Electronics. It is negotiating to renew deals with Toshiba and Renesas Electronics after their patent licenses expired.

Micron Technology has disclosed in an SEC filing that Samsung has agreed to pay the company US$275 million under a new 10-year patent cross-licensing agreement.

"Although discussions are ongoing with Sony and Renesas Electronics to secure their continued access to our semiconductor packaging technology through a licensing relationship with us, these discussions have not sufficiently advanced, thus necessitating this lawsuit," said Henry Nothhaft, chairman and CEO of Tessera.

"With closer access to the Arm technology we will be able to enhance our R&D activities for ARM-based products," said KD Hallman, general manager, Microsoft.

Rambus has net profits of US$150.9 million for the first quarter, compared with losses of US$17.4 million in the same quarter last year. Revenues for the quarter soared 492% to US$161.9 million, thanks to a licensing agreement with Samsung.

Currently, Apple pays royalties for ARM's chip designs used in its products. If the company acquired ARM, it could conceivably raise licensing costs to rivals or even take ARM designs off the market.

Tessera Technologies has signed an updated technology licensing agreement with United Test and Assembly Center (UTAC), which provides test and assembly services for a wide range of semiconductor devices. The initial term of the updated license agreement runs through the end of 2016.

The company, which receives licensing fees from patents of its memory chip designs, lost US$23.3 million compared with a loss of US$15.5 million in fourth-quarter 2008.

Samsung Electronics and Rambus have reached an agreement settling all claims between them and the licensing of Rambus' patent portfolio for all Samsung semiconductor products.

Ericsson has withdrawn its complaint to the European Commission regarding Qualcomm's WCDMA (3G) licensing activities. The company will, however, continue its ongoing dialogue with competition authorities around the world in relation to Qualcomm's licensing practices.

Microsoft and Primax Electronics has announced that the patent infringement case brought by Microsoft against Primax in the US District Court in Northern California and before the International Trade Commission (ITC) has been settled, and that Primax has entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement covering Microsoft's patents for U2 and Tilt Wheel technology. The agreement covers both past and future sales of the relevant products in the US. Terms of the agreement are confidential.

SanDisk may have just concluded a multibillion-dollar patent licensing lawsuit with Samsung which could determine the future of both SanDisk and the flash industry at large. As SanDisk considers a US$5.8 billion takeover offer by the flash giant, private arbitration has given Sandisk rights to a technology that may well hold the future of flash memory.