On Wednesday, GlobalFoundries (GF) announced that it had filed a lawsuit against IBM for disclosing its trade secrets regarding jointly developed chip technologies to Intel and the Rapidus consortium of Japan. IBM is allegedly actively stealing the engineers from GF, according to the lawsuit. The foundry requests restitution, harsher penalties, a directive to stop further unauthorised disclosures, and an order to stop improper enrollment practises.
After acquiring IBM’s microelectronics division in 2015, GlobalFoundries claims that the company’s trade secrets and proprietary intellectual property have been illegally disclosed by IBM. According to the complaint, IBM’s top management misrepresented the Intel and Rapidus partnerships as relying on technology created over many years as a result of research carried out at the Albany NanoTech Complex. However, after purchasing IBM’s microelectronics division eight years ago, GlobalFoundries views that IP as its property.
As part of their partnership, which was announced in 2021, IBM is currently working with Intel on various semiconductor-related technologies and with Japan’s Rapidus consortium on the latter’s 2nm fabrication process. Gate-all-around (GAA) transistors are the basis of the manufacturing technologies being developed by Intel and Rapidus at the moment. Researchers at the Albany NanoTech Complex have studied this type of transistor for many years.
IBM’s exact disclosures to Intel and Rapidus as part of their collaboration are unknown, but it is conceivable that at least some of the intellectual property (IP) it may have shared came from the research of its microelectronics division.
GlobalFoundries asserts that by sharing this IP with Intel and Rapidus, IBM is unjustly benefiting to the tune of “potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in licencing income and other benefits.”
GlobalFoundries is requesting compensatory and punitive damages as a result.
The fact that IBM is actively seeking engineers from Fab 8 and that these efforts have intensified since the IBM/Rapidus announcement in December 2022 is another concern for GlobalFoundries. Now, GF is requesting that the court order an end to these allegedly illegal hiring practises.
In 2018, GlobalFoundries stopped creating cutting-edge process technologies. It’s uncertain if Albany NanoTech Complex IP will be required before 2015. To meet the escalating demands of its clients, the business will eventually have to create its own sub-10nm and GAA-based production nodes.
The plaintiff filed the complaint in an effort to gain leverage against IBM in the legal dispute regarding the abrupt change in GlobalFoundries’ roadmap in 2018 and IBM’s inability to produce its processors at GF using cutting-edge process technologies. GlobalFoundries contends that the allegations are without merit.
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