After the last attempt to gain control over ProMOS, Germany-based Infineon AG now wants to sue its former partner and finally sell-off its shares in the joint venture between itself and Mosel Vitelic. Meanwhile ProMOS is reportedly prepares to sign a deal with Elpida. What is very interesting, Mosel added the ninth seat in the director’s board; it is rumoured that Robert Tsao, the chairman of UMC, will occupy it.

At the weekend the director’s board of ProMOS meeting was held to elect the new management team. Initially Infineon wanted to promote four its members in the nine-member board, but eventually only three members were selected. Moreover, after certain negotiations and excluding Infineon’s electors from the vote, Mosel Vitelic’s representatives took away one of the seats from its [already former] partner. With only two members in the board, Infineon cannot control the company and even cannot ban the decisions. As a result, there is not a lot of sense for the German memory vendor to stay with ProMOS any longer now.

Infineon announced at the press conference on Sunday that the company would sell its 30.7% shares at ProMOS as soon as possible. In addition, they were going to fill a legal action suit against Mosel Vitelic for excluding Infineon’s representatives from the vote. Although the spokesperson from the former company said that there had been “a conflict of interest” around the third member of the board from Infineon, it is clear that the Taiwanese memory maker just did not want to share the management of ProMOS with Infineon anymore. Frankly speaking, Infineon has been indicating its desire to quit ProMOS for months, so, it is a bit surprising that now they are angry with the decision. On the other hand, ProMOS still utilises Infineon’s technologies and the latter reminded that as soon as ProMOS sells its DRAM chips, Infineon will fill a lawsuit accusing the Taiwanese memory maker of infringing the patents of the world’s fourth largest memory maker.

Taiwanese DigiTimes web-site told that according to their sources ProMOS had signed a deal with Elpida on January 11, involving 90nm and below technologies and the establishment of a 12-inch joint venture in Taiwan. The agreement basically has nothing to do with the present problems – ProMOS still does not have any rights to manufacture memory using 0.13 or 0.11 micron technologies because they were developed by Infineon. Of course, ProMOS can try to license these fabrication processes from Elpida, however, it always takes time to tune the equipment and start making chips using another technology.

I want to remind you that ProMOS has huge debts it needs to pay in about three months time, while Elpida and Mosel Vitelic are not profitable.