Intel's shell game

Electronic News, April 19, 1999

Intel Corp. took the unusual step of acquiring a Cayman Islands shell company called Maelen Ltd. to intervene in a court case. The convoluted circumstances are as follows: Intel is locked in patent litigation with TechSearch LLC, a Northbrook, Ill. law firm which last year acquired the rights to a microprocessor patent held by International Meta Systems Inc., a design start-up that has gone into bankruptcy.

TechSearch last summer filed a patent infringement suit against Intel in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, with a trial date more than a year away. Maelen subsequently challenged the sale of the patent, although it didn't reveal initially that it had been acquired by Intel a few months earlier, prompting the judge overseeing the case to criticize Intel. An Intel spokesman, Chuck Mulloy, defended the company's actions, saying that TechSearch made a living by trying "to extort money from large corporations".