News Article
Jury awards $123 million against Mitsubishi in breach of contract case
A Silicon Valley jury has found Mitsubishi Electric & Electronics USA, Inc. guilty of violating an April 2001 non-disclosure agreement with a small technology company, Grail Semiconductor, Inc. The case involved pioneering technology for a unique memory chip design sold by Mitsubishi's sister company Renesas Electronics Corporation of Tokyo, Japan.
After a three week trial and 4 days of deliberation, the 12 person jury found that Mitsubishi had illegally used and disclosed Grail's confidential technical information for an inductive-capacitive memory chip to its affiliate Mitsubishi-Japan and to the jointly-owned Japanese company, Renesas, awarding $123,898,889 in damages to Grail. Renesas is one of the world's largest manufacturers of memory chips with annual sales topping $8 billion.
The two Renesas products at issue in the case are its SUPER SRAM (also known as Advanced Low Power SRAM) and its embedded MONOS-FLASH microcontroller units (MCU's). Annual sales of the two product families exceed $4 billion.
"This is a great victory for the little guy against companies like Mitsubishi and Renesas, who, in this case, decided to simply take technology rather than pay for it" said Raymond P. Niro of Niro, Haller & Niro, lead trial counsel in the case. Attorney's fees and prejudgment interest could be added to the $123,898,889 judgment. "We feel vindicated" said Ron Hofer, CEO of Grail: "the real impact of this case could be a possible injunction against the Mitsubishi companies and Renesas prohibiting use of our technology." Grail also has a separate suit against Renesas for patent infringement pending in Federal Court in San Francisco.
The case is: Grail Semiconductor, Inc. v. Mitsubishi Electric & Electronics USA, Inc., Case No. 1-07-CV-098590, Superior Court of California, Santa Clara County (Kenneth P. Barnum, J). Grail Semiconductor is a privately-held technology company that licenses patents and other technology created by Donald S. Stern a prolific inventor who holds more than 25 patents. For further information contact Raymond P. Niro at Niro, Haller & Niro, rniro@nshn.com (312-236-0733 or 561-504-0734 cell phone).
Grail was represented in the case by Raymond P. Niro, Christopher J. Lee, Kara Szpondowski, Joseph Culig, Anna Folgers and Gabriel Opatken of Niro, Haller & Niro and Martin Fineman and Samuel Dawood of the San Francisco-based law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP.
Mitsubishi was represented in this case by David S. Elkins, Alan Briggs, Xavier Brandwajn, Joseph P. Grasser and Amy E. Rose of Squire Sanders LLP.
