News Article
Tegal provides litigation update
Tegal Corporation announced that the Superior Court of Santa Barbara, California had denied defense motions for summary judgments in the case involving Tegal's wholly-owned subsidiary, Sputtered Films Inc. (SFI) against Agilent Technologies, Avago Technologies, Advanced Modular Sputtering (AMS) and other corporate and individual defendants.
The case involving charges made by SFI of trade secret theft against the defendants will be starting a jury trial on November 7, 2006, in the Superior Court of Santa Barbara, California.At the upcoming trial, SFI expects to prove that Agilent, together with AMS, misappropriated trade secrets in SFI's Endeavor sputtering system and put those secrets to use in custom sputtering systems that were jointly built by AMS and Agilent. Avago is also listed as a defendant in the trial as they acquired Agilent's Semiconductor Products Group in December 2005 for $2.66 billion. During the trial, SFI will ask the jury to award more than $100 million in damages. If punitive damages are deemed appropriate, the damages awarded could be doubled. Much of the evidence being used in the trial involves confidential business information and the Court has imposed a protective order that will remain in effect until the jury renders its verdict. The trial is expected to last about six weeks and a verdict is expected in late December.
