NVEC

NVE filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Everspin Technologies in the US. NVE claims that Everspin infringes three NVE MRAM patents. NVE seeks an injunction for Everspin to cease using NVE?s patented technology and provide compensation for damages caused by the infringement.

Everspin was spun-off Freescale, which was spun-off from Motorola, which was an NVE licensee. Back in 2006, when Freescale announced the first MRAM products, NVE tried to negotiate an agreement with them, it seems that after 5 and a half years the company decided to resort to litigation after all. Here's what Daniel Baker (NVE's CEO) said back then: "Based on a preliminary analysis, we believe Freescale's MRAM comes within the scope of claims in a number of NVE patents. We hope to negotiate a mutually beneficial agreement with Freescale to give them access to NVE intellectual property without having to resort to litigation"

NVE reported their financial results, and in the conference call they gave some interesting new details about their MRAM program. Daniel Baker (the CEO) says that NVE 'overcame many of the technical challenges in making MRAM'. In fact, the company is already shipped some sample prototype MRAM chips, but they don't call it 'production' yet. The samples will be for specialized niche applications - but the company sees this as a 'vehicle to develop MRAM technology'. In the future the company hopes to address large volume anti-tamper applications such as to prevent identity theft or improve the security of credit cards and smart cards.

In regards to Everspin being a licensee, here's what they say - "EverSpin is a company that's making and selling commercial MRAM, and they are spin-off of Freescale, which was a spin-off of Motorola. So, we have a long historical relationship. Motorola was an early investor in NVE, and we had research contracts and intellectual property agreements with Motorola. So, we believe that they share our vision for a very bright future for MRAM"

NVE was granted a new patent (number 7,813,165) titled “Magnetic Memory Layers Thermal Pulse Transitions,” relating to Magnetothermal MRAM.

NVE explains that Magnetothermal MRAM is an MRAM design that uses a combination of magnetic fields and ultra-fast heating from electrical current pulses to reduce the energy required to write data.

NVE Corporation was granted a new MRAM patent number 7,715,228, titled Cross-Point Magnetoresistive Memory.

The invention was made with U.S. Government support under a Missile Defense Agency contract and assigned to NVE. The U.S. Government has certain rights in the invention.

NVE says that they have completed several custom anti-temper MRAM integrated circuit designs. NVE designs conventional semiconductor ICs which they fabricate at outside foundries. Then they add the Spintronic structures, in this case spin-dependent tunnel junction memory cells, in their own factory.

NVE now reveals that they have received a number of the foundry wafers they have designed and they are in the process of adding MRAM to the wafers. The prototypes look promising so far although a fair amount of development remains before production.

NVE Corporation announced today financial results for the quarter and nine months ended December 31, 2008.  Total revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 increased 23% to $5.88 million from $4.77 million in the prior-year quarter. The revenue increase was due to an 8% increase in product sales and a 150% increase in contract research and development revenue. Net income for the third quarter of fiscal 2009 increased 45% to $2.47 million.