Chip giant Intel started a legal action in a Texas district court against Negotiated Data Solutions (N-Data).

Intel said in its filing to the court that on the 1st of June 1976, Intel and Natsemi entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement, which gave the chip giant access to National's patents and patent applications. But, claimed Intel, National assigned a number of patents to a firm called Vertical Networks, which subsequently re-assigned the patents to N-Data.

The patents in question are 5,361,261; 5,533,018; 5,594,734 and 5,566,169.

The tale gets more tangled because in December 2003, N-Data sued Dell over some of these patents, and later sued Dell again. Dell asked Intel to indemnify it over allegations it had infringed the patents.

And in January of this year, the Federal Trade Commission issued a complaint and consent order against N-Data, which ruled that assignment of the original patents was guarded by the caveats in the original Intel-Natsemi cross licence deal.

So Intel is filing for a declaratory judgement so that if N-Data sues any of its customers, they'll be protected. X
 

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