The Flash memory module market is a very crowded and busy one and there are quite a lot of companies out there that claim they're the original inventors, or "parents" of the Flash storage memory modules. One of these companies is SanDisk, who has decided to take some measures against its competitors and filed three patent infringement actions against just about every major manufacturer and retailer of Flash memory modules on the market.

Thus, SanDisk sued 25 companies that manufacture, sell and import USB flash drives, CompactFlash cards, multimedia cards, MP3/media players and/or other removable flash storage products, including here some of the most important names in the industry, as for example Corsair Memory, Imation/Memorex, A-Data, Apacer, Kingston, LG Electronics, PQI, PNY, Transcend, Verbatim, Buffalo, Dane-Elec and many more.

The actions, filed in the United States District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin and in the United States International Trade Commission ("ITC"), allege that the defendants have infringed various SanDisk system-level patents (although the subject of said patents and their exact nature has not yet been revealed) and seek damages and a permanent injunction in the federal court actions, as well as a permanent exclusion order from the ITC banning importation of the products into the United States.

"These actions demonstrate SanDisk's long-term commitment to enforcing its patents, both to protect our investment in research and development by obtaining a fair return on that investment, and out of fairness to third-parties that participate in our patent licensing program," said E. Earle Thompson, Chief Intellectual Property Counsel at SanDisk. "Our goal is to resolve these matters by offering the defendants the opportunity to participate in our patent licensing program for card and system technology. Otherwise, we will aggressively pursue these actions, seeking a prompt judicial resolution awarding damages, obtaining injunctive relief and banning importation of infringing product."

It remains to be seen just how these three trials will end, but if the final court rulings favor SanDisk, the company will most likely become much, much richer than it is today, since most of the aforementioned companies will most likely decide to settle rather than lose the very important US market.

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