Technology Properties Limited (TPL Group) is a privately held California corporation founded in 1988–89 and headquartered in Cupertino, California (court filings also give a San Jose address). It is not publicly traded; its size — headcount and revenue — is not disclosed in public sources, so no reliable figure can be given. Founder and chairman Dan Leckrone led the firm, with Charles H. Moore, inventor of the Forth programming language, serving as CTO. TPL operates through affiliates including Alliacense Limited (its licensing arm), MCM Portfolio LLC (holder of the "Core Flash" portfolio), and, from 2005, Phoenix Digital Solutions, a joint venture with Patriot Scientific Corp.
TPL is best characterized as an intellectual-property holding and licensing entity rather than a manufacturing operating company. Its principal asset is the Moore Microprocessor Patent (MMP) portfolio — seven U.S. patents plus European and Japanese counterparts, asserted to cover fundamental microprocessor techniques such as separate CPU/IO clocks ('336), multiple instruction fetch ('584), and on-chip oscillator/embedded memory ('148). The portfolio was jointly owned with Patriot Scientific and licensed by Alliacense; Intel, AMD, HP, Fujitsu, Sony, Nikon and others took licenses. Corporate materials also describe TPL as commercializing products (multi-core processors, packaging technologies), but these claims are unverified.
Litigation posture: TPL is predominantly an asserting entity, though the tracked data shows a two-way pattern (2 cases as plaintiff, 3 as defendant). It filed infringement suits in the plaintiff-friendly Eastern District of Texas (Marshall) before Judge T. John Ward — e.g. Technology Properties Ltd. et al. v. Fujitsu Limited (2005) — while also defending declaratory-judgment actions brought by accused manufacturers.
Notable cases: A group of roughly 20 Japanese electronics manufacturers (including Toshiba) filed DJ suits in N.D. Cal. (Oakland) in 2005 seeking declarations of non-infringement/invalidity; HTC filed a parallel DJ action (N.D. Cal., Judge Fogel), where a 2013 jury found HTC infringed the '336 patent and awarded a $958,560 lump-sum royalty. Separately, co-inventor Moore sued TPL and Alliacense in 2010 alleging fraud and breach of fiduciary duty, and ARM won a Federal Circuit non-infringement affirmance in 2008.