Avago/Broadcom Create Patent Powerhouse

Rana J. Pratap, EETimes
6/8/2015 07:00 AM EDT

With their proposed $37 billion merger, Broadcom Corp. will strengthen Avago Technologies' patent position significantly in sectors such as mobile, the data center and the Internet of Things.

Avago’s own patent portfolio is small, with around 5,000 patents and patent applications. But when combined with patents and applications assigned to its recent acquisitions such as LSI, PLX, Emulex, CyOptics, and Infineon, the number of patents in its portfolio rises significantly to 20,304. However, this is still slightly less than the 20,689 patent and applications Broadcom has in its portfolio. Together the merged company is among the top ten semiconductor vendors who have the largest patent portfolios, according to an analysis by our team at LexInnova.

LSI Corp. and Broadcom are major players in data center and server technology domains. The merger will result in the new Broadcom surging ahead of many leading players in these domains, such as Qualcomm and ARM. Specifically, Broadcom has a large number of patents and applications in the domains of power management, control units, and memory controllers, which will benefit the merged company.

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