The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has confirmed Patent 5,737,035, which covers Microtune's silicon TV tuner architecture. Broadcom Corp. requested the reexamination after Microtune won a court case charging Broadcom with patent infringement.
Microtune president and CEO, James A. Fontaine, said, "This is a great outcome, confirming the validity of our patent and the uniqueness of our truly innovative technology. Our patent was challenged twice and we were successful both times, once in court and now in a PTO reexamination. We went into the reexamination proceedings with 128 claims, and, as a result of the PTO reexamination process, 163 claims were allowed, demonstrating the strength of our tuner inventions."
Patent 5,737,035 was originally issued in 1998. It covers Microtune's RF integrated circuit technology. As discussed in a previous RF Report, Microtune recently introduced the MT2130 for analog and digital TV tuners used in PC notebooks, USB tuner sticks, portable TVs, DVD players and other power-sensitive devices.
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