picoTurbo Receives Favorable Ruling in Patent Infringement Lawsuit Initiated by ARM

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 20, 2001--picoTurbo, a provider of synthesizable RISC microprocessor cores, today announced it received a favorable judicial ruling in the patent infringement lawsuit brought against the company by ARM Ltd. The ``Markman'' ruling by the Honorable Judge Claudia Wilken, received Monday, June 18, significantly limits the scope of the seven patents ARM has asserted in its patent infringement lawsuit.

The ruling supports picoTurbo's position that it does not infringe any of the seven patents, and picoTurbo will file a motion for early summary judgment. ``We are very pleased with the outcome of the Markman hearing,'' said Chip Stearns, CEO of picoTurbo. ``This ruling follows the recent trend of courts rejecting the efforts of aggressive IP providers who may use the legal system to achieve business objectives, claiming patent coverage to which they are not entitled. Today's opinion squarely rejected the unjustifiably broad scope that ARM sought for its patents, and the effect is to confirm that these patents simply are not applicable to picoTurbo's products.''

Judge Wilken's ruling, consistent with picoTurbo's position, includes the following key statements:

The '461 and '115 patents specifically require that the device have two instruction decoders;
The '646 patent requires that PLA structures be used for decoding critical bits of each program instruction word;
The PC modifier, as described in the '115 and '265 patents, modify (among other things) the T-bit in the program counter;
The current program status register, as described in the '563 patent, is a single structure and is distinct from the saved program status registers;
The user mode, as described in the '493 patent, denies access to privileged resources, while the system mode (which must be a form of exception mode) must provide access to those resources;
The '804 patent requires multiplier-accumulator ``N-bit results'' that are different from ``2N-bit results''.

picoTurbo had also asked the Court to rule, as a preliminary matter, on certain of its arguments that the patents were invalid. Because the Court deferred ruling on those issues until a later stage of the case, picoTurbo expects to present those issues to the Court again in summary judgment.

To date, picoTurbo has licensed more than 30 cores for customers developing high-volume applications, including cellular phones, MP3 players and personal digital assistants (PDA).

About picoTurbo:

picoTurbo, Inc. is a leading provider of 16/32-bit RISC microprocessor cores in the mobile, wireless and embedded markets. With synthesizable high-performance cores and Turn-key IP(TM) solutions, picoTurbo offers design flexibility, lower development costs and maximum manufacturing freedom for semiconductor manufacturers, fabless companies, ASIC vendors and system OEMs. picoTurbo's innovations reduce time-to-market and increase performance by enhancing microprocessor capabilities and enabling new applications, while leveraging industry standard legacy software. picoTurbo is based in Silicon Valley (U.S.), with a Taiwan design center and worldwide distributors. For more information, visit www.picoturbo.com or call 408/86-8801.

picoTurbo, picoTurbo logo and Turn-key IP are trademarks of picoTurbo, Inc.

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     bkajiyama@picoturbo.com