VIA sues Intel over the Pentium 4 - the war continues...

The war in the courts between Intel and VIA escalated today, as VIA filed suit against Intel for patent infringement by the Pentium 4 processor family.

This is another suite in the series announced by VIA on September 10, and reinforces

The war in the courts between Intel and VIA escalated today, as VIA filed suit against Intel for patent infringement by the Pentium 4 processor family.

This is another suite in the series announced by VIA on September 10, and reinforces the fact that VIA is serious about its patent rights.

The suite specifically refers to the joint VIA and Centaur patent, U.S. Patent Number 6,253,311 (AKA the '311 Patent), that relates to the way numeric data is stored in a microprocessor.

The suite calls for a cessation of sale of Pentium 4 processors, as well as payment of damages to VIA and Centaur.

"VIA is not only a leading provider of core logic chipsets worldwide, but also is becoming an important supplier of PC microprocessors, thanks to the hard work of our CPU designers in Texas," said Richard Brown, Director of Marketing for VIA Technologies, Inc. "Filing this lawsuit is the first step in protecting our intellectual property rights."

Where the war of law will end between the two semiconductor giants, no-one knows…