A NEW PATENT PORTFOLIO STRATEGY - INVEST IN PATENTEES SUING YOUR COMPETITORS: AMD has decided to invest in a small chip technology development company, called Patriot Scientific, that's suing Intel for alleged patent infringement.

Patriot Scientific this week confirmed that AMD has bought an undisclosed number of the company's restricted shares and licensed not only its ShBoom processor patent portfolio but also its Ignite 32-bit processor design.

In January 2004, Patriot sued Sony, Fujitsu, Toshiba, Matsushita and NEC for alleged infringement of patent number 5,809,336, which it owns. The company sued them because they had shipped product containing Intel processors that it also claimed violated its intellectual property rights. If the move was intended to force Intel to license the patent, it failed - Intel countersued, and was itself sued by Patriot in February 2004. Patriot is seeking monetary damages to the tune of "several million dollars" for the alleged infringement.

Since then, Patriot has notified 150 other companies that it believes their products infringe its patent, though as yet it has not initiated legal proceedings against them, undoubtedly while it awaits the outcome of its action against Intel.

AMD's interest in the Ignite technology is also interesting because Ignite is a Risc-like 32-bit processor core with a strong SIMD component. According to Patriot, multiple Ignites can work together within the company's InFlame architecture to create a multi-SIMD processor. It just so happens that this configuration shares similarities with the architecture Sony and IBM have been discussing as of late to power the PlayStation 3.