Arctic Wants to Sue AMD over Fusion Branding

Advanced micro Devices may soon find itself with a lawsuit of its own to deal with, or a new one at least, as Arctic is thinking of fighting over the 'Fusion' trademark.

The IT market is never really free of legal struggles, but that doesn't seem to be doing anything to stop the flow of yet more lawsuits.

It so happens that Advanced Micro Devices may soon find itself targeted by a lawsuit started by Arctic.

According to a certain report (translated), Arctic feels that its “Fusion” trademark is being threatened by AMD's apparent use of it.

Arctic registered the trademark a while ago, when it used “Fusion” for its PSUs (power supply units).

If these tensions do escalate into full-blow court fights, the battle will probably be one of the strangest yet, and this is not just because of how AMD's recently said it was dropping the Fusion branding altogether.

For those that don't know yet, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said it was going to use Heterogeneous Computing instead.

That said, even if AMD had not scrapped the idea, Arctic would have had its work cut out for it.

After all, while AMD does use “Fusion” internally, it does not actually employ it in marketing strategies, since all APUs are sold under the Vision processor family.

Granted, the company slogan “The future is fusion” could be targeted, but the fact remains that there is little to no actual Fusion branding on any APU boxes.

On the flip side, the media has been extensively referring to AMD's latest chips as Fusion products and AMD even opened a Fusion Center of Innovation, so Artic may, in fact, have enough cause to file for trademark infringement.

The aforementioned report claims that Arctic approached AMD Germany for an amicable solution, but AMD rejected direct talks and hired a law firm instead.

There was a proposal for a general license, but the royalty payment AMD offered was unacceptable, being lower than the attorney fees Arctic had already paid.

Thus, as sad as it is for yet another legal quarrel to start, it looks like it is just a matter of time.