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Amazon.com Inc yesterday confirmed it has settled a two-year-old patent infringement lawsuit with Barnesandnoble.com LLC, though it declined to disclose the terms. The deal draws a line under what is probably the second-most controversial patent dispute after BT Group Plc's still unresolved claim on hyperlinking.

"Other than to say we're pleased to put this matter behind us, we have no comment on the BN.com settlement," said an Amazon spokesperson. The company would not disclose whether BN.com will pay license fees, a settlement lump sum, or whether it will use the technology that Amazon alleges infringes upon its 1-Click shopping patent.

Amazon sued BN.com in October 1999, claiming the firm used an e-commerce system that infringed upon its patent. The patent covered a system whereby a server remembered a customer's shipping and payment information, so they could make future purchases by simply clicking the "Buy" button.

Critics, which were legion, said One-Click was nothing but a rudimentary implementation of HTTP cookies, a web standard, and that Amazon should not be allowed to claim a patent.

The lawsuit caused quite a stir in developer circles, particularly in the open-source movement. The uproar ultimately caused Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to call for the updating of US patent law to account for the internet age - shortening the term of patents and organizing a central repository of "prior art".

In December 1999 the judge hearing the case enjoined BN.com on a preliminary basis from using its "Express Lane" feature, indicating that Amazon had a good chance of winning. The company quickly implemented a workaround that required two clicks.

News source: The Register - Amazon settles 1-Click patent dispute

TSMC expects the technology to deliver substantial improvements on 0.13-micron technology in terms of speed, power reduction, integration, and density. For example, a device built with the new 90nm process would occupy only half the area of a device using 0.13-micron linewidths.

“The development of this [90nm] process will give our customers early access to an advanced SoC process that supports high-performance processors and peripherals together with embedded DRAM and SRAM,” said Theo Claasen, chief technology officer at Philips Semiconductors. “Leveraging the expertise of the three companies, we will be in a leading position to offer the world's most advanced and manufacturing-efficient CMOS technology.”

Some skeptics

Some customers, such as fabless chipmaker Via Technologies Inc., have a more conservative outlook. The Taipei-based company is among TSMC's top five customers, placing orders of 10,000 to 20,000 8in.-wafer equivalents a month.

“It's hard to tell now if this standardized process will be favorable,” said William Lee, a spokesman for Via, the world's No. 2 PC chipset company after Intel Corp. “Certainly, it's nice to have new technology to use on our products. But we would be charged higher prices, and we're not sure when the technology can be used in volume production.”

The 90nm process has been validated on fully functional test chips made at TSMC R&D facilities in Taiwan and on a pilot line at a fab in Crolles, France, owned jointly by ST and Philips. Prototyping is slated for the second half of this year.

Will UMC suffer?

United Microelectronics Corp., TSMC's largest foundry rival, has opposed the concept of standardized processes. “Customers need to fine-tune performance and density based on their individual requirements,” F.T. Liou, a UMC vice president, said recently. “If you standardize too much, you're going to lose the ability to do that.”

Some analysts expect TSMC's project will likely convince ST and Philips to steer more business its way-possibly at the expense of UMC. Hsinchu-based UMC refuted such speculation.

“It is our understanding that this joint development program does not include any volume commitments for foundry outsourcing and that [the partners are] free to transfer the resulting technology to any other foundry,” UMC said in a statement. The company added that it has three years remaining in a multiyear foundry agreement with ST that will in no way be affected by the 90nm development program.

This is not the first partnership involving the three companies. The semiconductor divisions of ST and Philips have been cooperating since 1992 on the joint development of CMOS digital and mixed-signal processes, an effort that was extended and strengthened in 2000. Philips also co-founded TSMC and remains a shareholder.

“It's becoming a trend for companies to co-develop new processes,” said Alfred Yin, head of research at BNP Paribas Peregrine Securities in Hong Kong. “There are few that have the kind of deep pockets it takes to do it alone.”