Plaintiff
1 case as plaintiff.
Spansion, Ltd. / Spansion, Inc. — The entity is best documented as Spansion, Inc. (also appearing as Spansion LLC and its Thai/other subsidiaries; formerly FASL LLC). It was founded in 1993 as a flash-memory joint venture between Advanced Micro Devices and Fujitsu, rebranded Spansion in 2003–04, incorporated in Delaware in 2005, and spun off as an independent flash-memory maker in December 2005. Headquarters were at 915 DeGuigne Drive, Sunnyvale, California, with wafer fabrication in Austin, Texas and final manufacturing in Bangkok, Thailand. It traded publicly on the NYSE under ticker CODE. Rough size: about 3,700 employees in 2014 and net sales of $971.7 million in FY2013 and $1.25 billion in FY2014 (Spansion 10-K; Wikipedia).
Products/operations — An operating semiconductor manufacturer (not an NPE). It designed and made embedded-systems products: NOR and NAND flash memory using floating-gate and MirrorBit technology, ARM-based microcontrollers (FM and Traveo families), and analog/mixed-signal and power-management ICs. Its 2013 purchase of Fujitsu Semiconductor's microcontroller and analog business expanded those lines. End markets were automotive, industrial, consumer, communications and gaming embedded electronics; it also licensed IP. Cypress Semiconductor agreed to merge with Spansion in December 2014 (all-stock, ~$1.59B equity value), and the combined company retained the Cypress name; Spansion ceased independent existence in 2015 (Cypress press release; Wikipedia).
Litigation posture — In the tracked data Spansion appears only as a plaintiff (1 case, 0 as defendant) — a PTAB proceeding, not a district-court suit. That is consistent with an operating company asserting its own patents offensively, rather than an NPE acquiring and monetizing third-party portfolios. No plaintiff-friendly district venue (e.g., E.D. Tex.) appears in the tracked list.
Notable case/context — Spansion, Inc. et al. v. Macronix International Co., Ltd. (USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board, Technology Center 2800, filed 2014-07-11) reflects a two-way non-volatile-memory/MCU patent conflict with Macronix. Related ITC Section 337 proceedings (not in this tracked list) saw Macronix accuse Spansion's flash and MCU products and Spansion file its own complaint; the parties settled and those investigations terminated in early 2015.
Inter partes review petition filed by Spansion entities against Macronix International challenging claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 of U.S. 6,002,630. The PTAB instituted review on Jan. 21, 2015, and the proceeding was terminated by settlement on Jan. 30, 2015.