Semiconductors

Legal Counsel to Industry Leaders

Latham’s Semiconductor Industry Group counsels public and private semiconductor companies at all stages of development, including semiconductor technology start-ups and mature public companies. 

What sets Latham apart is its significant presence in key semiconductor markets, including Silicon Valley, London, Washington, D.C., Munich, Tokyo, Singapore and Shanghai.  In addition, the breadth of the practice provides semiconductor clients with legal expertise to meet the challenges of growing a semiconductor business in a crowded global marketplace, whether those needs are financing, intellectual property licensing or commercial transactions, strategic alliances, litigation, regulatory, bankruptcy, environmental, tax or employment.

The firm’s semiconductor clients include companies engaged in the design, manufacture and commercialization of ASICs, programmable logic devices and memory ICs. Latham regularly works with companies engaged in design automation and design tools supply, semiconductor design services and semiconductor process technology. Latham  advises semiconductor manufacturing tool companies and businesses involved with packaging and testing equipment and services.

Latham also works with microprocessor companies, as well as board and component-level businesses that require semiconductor devices. Representative examples of our clients include AMD, Broadcom, Dialog, Spansion, Marvell, Mentor Graphics, and MPS among many others.

Comprehensive Expertise

Latham offers semiconductor industry clients a variety of legal services, including advising on:

• Antitrust
• Bankruptcy
• Commercial transactions     
• Company representation
• Corporate governance
• Employee benefits and compensation
• Environmental compliance
• Export control and regulatory compliance
• Financing
• Government contracts
• Intellectual property litigation
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Real estate
• Securities litigation
• Strategic alliances 
• Tax and international tax structuring
• Technology transfer and intellectual property licensing

Some of Latham’s recent work in the semiconductor area includes advising:

• Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. in its US$5.4 billion acquisition of ATI, and in its  spin-off of its manufacturing operations, resulting in the creation of Global Foundries, Inc.
• AU Optronics in a multiple-patent case filed by complainant Thomson Licensing in the International Trade Commission
• AU Optronics in a series of cases against Samsung Electronics pertaining to complex LCD technology including in the International Trade Commission and two District Courts
• InterDigital in a Section 337 patent infringement case against Nokia Corp., Huawei Technologies, ZTE Corp., and LG
• Representing defendant and counterclaimant LSI Corporation and Agere Systems, Inc. in a patent litigation filed by Altera Corp.
• Intermolecular in its IP licensing and joint development agreements for semiconductor development
• MagnaChip Semiconductor Corporation in its US$133 million initial public offering
• Mellanox Technologies in its acquisition of Voltaire, Ltd. and in its US$102 million initial public offering
• National Semiconductor in its acquisition by Texas Instruments
• Spansion in its bankruptcy as well as its formation and various strategic alliances
• Represented SuVolta, others in stock financings
• Tessera in its acquisition of certain camera module assets and business from Flextronics International