Infineon teams with Austria's NewLogic in wireless LAN licensing pact

Infineon teams with Austria's NewLogic in wireless LAN licensing pact
By Semiconductor Business News
March 7, 2002 (10:06 a.m. EST)
URL: http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20020307S0014

MUNICH -- Infineon Technologies AG here and Austria's NewLogic Technologies AG today announced a cross-licensing and royalty agreement for intellectual property (IP) used in wireless local area network products. The two companies said the pact will help Infineon speed development of wireless LAN products while supporting expansion of NewLogic's IP portfolio.

Munich-based Infineon plans to incorporate NewLogic's IP design cores and technology in new products and software for IEEE 802.11a and 802.11b networks. NewLogic, based in Lustenau, Austria, said it will include Infineon's IEEE 802.11 signal processing technology in its intellectual property for wireless LANs.

"This agreement will extend and elevate our long-standing relationship with NewLogic," said Ulrich Hamann, chief executive officer of Infineon's Wireless Solutions Group. "NewLogic's broad portfolio of wireless intellectual property will contribute to the acceleration of Infineon's dev elopment of leading-edge products for tomorrow's mobile Internet services and will help to address the diversity of devices delivering these future services in all wireless applications," he added.

Wireless LAN technology was incorporated in about 8 million PCs and laptop units in 2001, and that total is expected to reach 50 million computer users by 2005, according to a forecast from Dataquest Inc., cited by Infineon and NewLogic.

The agreement with Infineon is NewLogic's largest licensing pact so far, said Hans-Peter Metzler, chief executive officer of the five-year-old company. "By licensing today's platforms and cooperating on next-generation product definition, we can deliver a comprehensive set of solutions into next generation high growth volume markets," said Metzler, who founded NewLogic in May 1997. Prior to the startup's launch, Metzler was vice president of the Microcontroller Division at Siemens Semiconductor Group--which is now Infineon.

Terms of the cross-licensing and royalty agre ement were not released.