ARM, the Cambridge, England-based chip designer was yesterday
sued in California on allegations that its Java acceleration
technology infringes the patent of a US-based rival, Nazomi
Communications.
In a statement, ARM said it “is confident that its products do
not infringe the patent cited in the Nazomi lawsuit or any other
Nazomi patents. ARM thoroughly investigated the Nazomi patent
portfolio and developed its products in such a way that they would
not infringe any Nazomi patents.”
Mike Muller, ARM's CTO, said: "Having reviewed our technology,
it is obvious that we don't infringe the Nazomi patents." The
company’s lawyer added that the lawsuit is “frivolous” and
“ill-conceived”.
ARM, listed on Nasdaq, licenses its processors, peripherals and
System-on-Chip (SoC) designs to leading international electronics
companies. In March this year, Sun Microsystems released a Java
Virtual Machine (JVM) called “Monty” which was based in part on
ARM’s technology. A JVM is needed by a device to run programs
written in Java. Monty is aimed at mobile devices and claims to
boost the Java language’s performance by a factor of ten on mobile
phones.
