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Molex and Foxconn bury the hatchet
DisplayPort license agreed
Molex and Foxconn Electronics have settled a US dispute regarding the scope of a DisplayPort Standard license agreement.
Neither has admitted any wrongdoing. However Foxconn has been granted a separate, worldwide, royalty-bearing license giving it the right to sell non-standard connectors using the DisplayPort mating interface, and having a through-hole mounting interface.
In case you've been living in a cave for the past few years, DisplayPort is a standard for a digital audio/video interconnect between a computer and a display monitor. The US court case started when Foxconn claimed that Molex granted it a license to patents necessary to implement DisplayPort. The licensed technology covered surface mount technology and through-hole mounting technology. These are different methods for mounting electronic circuits.
Foxconn sued Molex in 2008, claiming that the outfit had sent letters and made oral statements to Foxconn's customers and prospective customers, asserting that Foxconn was acting outside the scope of the license and was infringing Molex's patents.