14 DAY TRIAL // Asustek Computer seems determined to make a stand against the accusations made by its competitor, Gigabyte Technology, against the EPU motherboards. The company brought a formal complaint before the Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) against its rival, claiming that Gigabyte had made false accusations regarding Asustek's EPU energy saving technology and the quality of its products. On the other hand, Asustek also filed a suit against Gigabyte, accusing the manufacturer of "defamatory acts."
On May 22nd, Asustek went reporting Gigabyte to FTC for making false accusations implying that the company had been misrepresenting or exaggerating the capabilities of its EPU technology. According to Asustek, these accusations harm its reputation.
Earlier this month, during a media event, Gigabyte made a presentation in which the company compared its own DES technology with Asustek's EPU, questioning the truth about performance figures published by Asustek, also claiming that the motherboards lacked some hardware features and that Asustek misled its customers. Shortly after this event, Asustek said in a press release that the accusations are false and that Gigabyte does not fully understand its engineering designs and methods. We have already published details on the accusations and the response to them.
Following this, Asustek stated that Gigabyte presented during the mentioned event an image of a piece of hardware with damaged capacitors. Asustek says that Gigabyte questions the validity of company's marketing through the use of that photograph, underlining that it does not use "100% all high-quality conductive polymer capacitors". According to Asustek, the product in the image was not manufactured by the company, but by another vendor, and Gigabyte's act was misrepresentation and deformation.
The issue will eventually be solved, the initiation of the formal proceedings being only the first step in that direction, and a long road lies ahead. The marketing departments of the two motherboards manufacturers will be bearing the war in the meantime. "Computex 2008 is going to be interesting," said on Gigabyte spokesperson.
Seeing the relations between the two companies become so tense, some may find it curious that less than two years ago, they were on the verge of joining forces under the Gigabyte United brand for selling motherboards and graphics cards.