14 DAY TRIAL // IBM today made it public that the company is filing a patent infringement lawsuit against the Taiwanese Asustek corporation. The complaint states that Asustek is currently using IBM's patented products and components to build their computers. IBM has already requested an exclusion order that is meant to restrict the importing of the infringer's products on the United States Market.
The complaint was addressed to the United States International Trade Commission, after IBM had made repeated attempts at reaching a peaceful solution to work in both companies' advantage. Since Asustek was completely unresponsive to their attempts and refused to make a licensing agreement with the IBM technology patent owner, but at the same time, continues to abuse their intellectual properties, IBM has given Asustek an ultimatum in front of the United States International Trade Commission that they must either acquire licenses or stop using IBM's patented technology.
IBM is not general at all. The company has pinpointed their affected patents and has completely identified the technology Asustek was abusing of. Asustek's products that are imported into the United States infringe three IBM patents, that are all protecting important aspects of computer systems, such as power supplies, computer cooling and computer clustering capabilities. Asustek is alleged to make illegal use of this technology in their notebook computers, the so-called barebone computer systems, servers, routers and various other computer components.
The technology IBM has patented is the result of extended research periods and substantial, multi-billion dollar investments. IBM has unveiled that their affected patented products include:
￭U.S. Patent No. 5,008,829: Personal computer power supply ￭U.S. Patent No. 5,249,741: Automatic fan speed control ￭U.S. Patent No. 5,371,852: Method and apparatus for making a cluster of computers appear as a single host on a network.
The United States International Trade Commission, an independent federal agency will investigate IBM's complaint and, if the verdict is in favor of the plaintiff, Asustek's infringing products could get blacklisted from the US market.