Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSMC), commonly known as TSMC, is a Taiwanese multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company headquartered in Hsinchu Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan. Founded on February 21, 1987, TSMC pioneered the pure-play foundry business model, exclusively manufacturing chips designed by other companies. The company is publicly traded on the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TWSE: 2330) and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: TSM). As of late 2024, TSMC and its subsidiaries employed over 83,000 people worldwide, with recent estimates placing total employees around 90,557. In 2024, the company generated US$90.08 billion in consolidated revenue, and its market capitalization was approximately $1.87 trillion as of May 2026.
TSMC is the world's largest independent semiconductor foundry, specializing in the manufacture of integrated circuits (ICs) for a broad range of applications, including high-performance computing, smartphones, the Internet of Things (IoT), automotive electronics, and digital consumer electronics. The company offers services such as wafer manufacturing, mask services, and IC packaging, utilizing advanced process technologies like 7-nanometer, 5-nanometer, and 3-nanometer nodes. Its business model ensures TSMC does not design or sell its own branded IC products, thus avoiding competition with its diverse customer base, which includes major companies like Apple, NVIDIA, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and AMD.
TSMC's patent litigation posture is defensive, with the company appearing as a defendant in all two tracked cases and zero as a plaintiff. This indicates it is an operating company defending its products and services against infringement allegations. The lawsuits originate from Longitude Licensing Limited and Marlin Semiconductor Limited, which are subsidiaries of IPValue Management, a patent assertion entity (PAE) owned by private equity firm Vector Capital.
Both tracked cases name TSMC as a defendant: Longitude Licensing Limited et al. v. Apple Inc. et al. before the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC), filed on February 18, 2025, and Longitude Licensing Limited et al. v. Lenovo Group Limited et al. in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The Eastern District of Texas is known as a plaintiff-friendly venue. The asserted patents, acquired from United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC), are directed to semiconductor devices and manufacturing technology. The allegations target semiconductor devices manufactured using TSMC's 7 nm and smaller process nodes, as well as products containing these devices, such as smartphones and personal computers. The Eastern District of Texas case was stayed pending the outcome of the parallel ITC investigation (337-TA-1443), with an evidentiary hearing in the ITC case scheduled for February 2, 2026.