Accoridng to PatentlyO, Apple has recently recorded the receipt of 200 patents and pending patent applications from the electronics company Freescale Semiconductor, Inc. Freescale was originally a division of Motorola but was spun off in 2003. The patents reportedly represent a wide range of topics related to computer hardware and wireless devices.
it is unclear from the information now available whether (1) Apple obtained full title to the patents and (2) whether Apple purchased the rights or obtained them through some other type of transaction.
It's not clear what Apple's intentions are with the patents or if they were part of some sort of settlement.
[via iPodNN]
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Source: Motorola Mobility History (http://www.motorola.com/Consumers/US-EN/About_Motorola/History)
@Apple: Replace Xcode with CodeWarrior!
;)
Yes, I was such a happy camper to uninstall Think and install Codewarrior. It was like Christmas each time we received an update in the mail.
I was brought into Freescale to help design/verify a sister version of the actual processor for the Dual Core G5 aimed at network processors. The main group worked on the apple version (faster and with graphic support ) we worked on the other version with different interfaces (FibreChannel).
Had only worked there for a couple of month when Apple announced they where going Intel and 3 months after that we in the sibling group was let go...
Got a nice separation package that bought me my current car so it worked out in the end.
I agree that it's possible Freescale has a number of RISC based patents that could be applicable to custom ARM designs. Wouldn't surprise me if Apple moves to ARM for their lower end laptops, combine it with the graphic power they are showing and it will feel more then fast enough for most daily usage.
Freescale has a large amount of interesting patents and research in RF, Microcontrollers, DSPs, Sensor technologies, etc.