Intel Gets Win in Patent Fight With Sanyo Over Chips in Lenovos

Intel Corp. scored a preliminary win Friday in a fight with Sanyo Electric Co. over patents at the center of a separate infringement case involving Lenovo laptops built with Intel wireless cards, when a Delaware judge tentatively ruled the cards were authorized by a license from Sanyo.

The license “broadly permits Intel to use or dispose of the wi-fi chips,” and “mounting them on adapter cards, even for eventual sale, is such a permitted use,” Vice Chancellor Morgan Zurn wrote for Delaware’s Chancery Court.

Zurn rejected Sanyo’s “unsuccessful attempts” to “muddy this straightforward conclusion.” But the judge left open the ...