Tesla and Broadcom (Avago) settle

2024 was not a great year for Broadcom on the patent enforcement front. It has failed to make Netflix after five years of litigation in the U.S. and Germany, and it lost two UPC cases against Tesla last summer: one in the Hamburg Local Division (LD) and on in the Munich LD .

Recently, Tesla supplier Realtek and Broadcom (Avago) dropped their litigation in the U.S., where Realtek originally hoped to obtain an antisuit injunction to shield its blue-chip key account from Broadcom’s German patent enforcement efforts. Realtek sued in the Delaware Chancery Court; Broadcom had the matter removed to the United States District Court for the District of Delaware; and it was sent back to the equity-focused state court. An anti-antisuit injunction (AASI) thwarted Realtek’s plan anyway, but the withdrawal of all U.S. litigation between Broadcom and Realtek raised the question of whether Tesla had also settled with Broadcom. Broadcom was asserting WiFi standard-essential patents (SEPs), though the UPC decisions in the summer related to non-SEPs.

Apparently it has: Broadcom has recently withdrawn a complaint filed in May 2024 with the Munich Local Division (LD) as a January 7, 2025 UPC decision shows.

It is unclear whether Tesla is paying royalties, or made a lump-sum payment, to Broadcom. Given the lack of success of Broadcom’s non-SEP enforcement efforts, it is possible that Tesla essentially just pays (more or less) FRAND royalties for Broadcom’s SEPs.