MediaTek Fends Off Antitrust Lawsuit Over Patent Bounty Deal (1)

A court dismissed an antitrust suit against Taiwanese chip heavyweight MediaTek Inc. stemming from a licensing deal between the company and a patent owner that promised the patentee $1 million to sue certain competitors.

Realtek Semiconductor Corp.—a rival Taiwan-based company that makes chips for use in televisions—sued in June 2023 alleging MediaTek was behind a series of lawsuits filed against Realtek by patent assertion entity Future Link Systems LLC. Realtek called MediaTek a “modern robber baron” based on an arrangement tucked into a MediaTek license deal with FLS—a unit of IPValue Management Inc.—that incentivized FLS to sue Realtek, which ...