Silicon Systems Files Lawsuit Over Its Patents

Silicon Systems Inc. said Thursday that it has sued a San Jose computer chip company for alleged infringement of two patents covering technology that governs recovery of data in computer disk drives.

Martin Jurick, senior vice president of corporate planning for Silicon Systems, said the suit filed in federal court in Los Angeles accuses Exar Corp. of copying the patented circuitry of the firm’s SSI 32D532 data recovery product.

Tom Melendrez, Exar’s senior corporate counsel, declined comment Thursday.

The data recovery product, a chip that costs less than $10, is widely used in a computer’s hard disk drives. It governs the process in which a reading device retrieves data on magnetic media, amplifies the signal and extracts the data in a code the computer can understand.

“It’s a large sales volume item for our company,” Jurick said.