SanDisk Files Patent Claims Against 25 Companies

By Tim Conneally | Published October 26, 2007, 1:02 PM

Flash memory leader SanDisk has filed patent infringement suits against no fewer than 25 companies in the US International Trade Commission, as well as in Federal Court.

Though public statements have yet to reveal which of SanDisk's over 780 U.S-issued patents (and over 400 foreign-issued patents) the companies are infringing upon, SanDisk says it is enforcing its patents to be fair to third parties who legitimately license from them.

The Milpitas, CA company has filed suit against the following companies: ACP-EP Memory, A-Data, Apacer, Behavior Computer (Emprex,) Buffalo, Chipsbank, Corsair Memory, Dane-Elec, Edge, Imation/Memorex, Interactive Media (Kanguru,) Kaser, Kingston, LG, Phison, PNY, PQI, Silicon Motion, Skymedi, Transcend, TSR (T.One,) USBest, Verbatim, Welldone, and Zotek/Zodata (Huke).

Some of the companies on this list are already involved in three cases against SanDisk, as there are also two cases open in the United States District Court in the Western district of Wisconsin. The first of the cases is for the infringement of the same five system-level patents involved in the ITC action, the second includes an additional two patents not involved.

In what is effectively a lawsuit against all its competitors, SanDisk seeks not only damages and a permanent injunction in the federal cases, but also a ban on importation of the products. A successful case for SanDisk could mean a substantial decrease in market rivalry for the memory leader.

Comments

View comments by with a score of at least

When are these companies going to start taking the diapers off and the thumbs out of their mouths. Now that they've sent all the jobs overseas and make more money now, they have nothing better to do than play in the courtyard.

WA-A-A!!!

Score: 0

|

In 2 years you're going to have 32GB, 64GB and 128GB cards, and the whole market will collapse because you'll just have one little tiny card with your whole freaking life on it.

The era of things that spin... hard drives, CD's, DVD's is coming to an end... Little cards with billions of bits are the future.

Score: 0

|

oh good. higher pricing on memory products. that'd be awesome

Score: 0

|

um ohes noes.. if they were smart about this, they could be on the band wagon of replacing disk hard drives.. but now they instead choose to fight amungst themselves.. and increase prices.. and lower sales.. and yay! prevent evolution of hard drives..

Score: 0

|

PDC 2009: What have we learned this week?

There was the freebie that no one will forget, the heebie-jeebies courtesy of Scott Guthrie, and a teensy bit clearer picture of how this cloud thingie should work.

Live report: Will Google Chrome OS change Linux?

The mysteries of just what Chrome OS is, and how much of an operating system it truly is, may be resolved today.

PDC 2009: Microsoft cares about Web browser performance

The effort to give users of the world's dominant Web browser the impression of quality, is a personal one for the man who leads that battle.

Nokia re-affirms its commitment to Symbian, sort of

Maemo won't necessarily be replacing Symbian in the Nokia N-Series, but that's definitely a place where it will be found.

E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season

E-readers are hot this year, and a lot of compelling new products have been released, but are there enough electrophoretic displays to go around?

Sony looks to finally open a single storefront for downloads

Sony has had many different download portals for movies, music, e-books, and games, and now it's looking to make a single shop for all of it.

Tuning out the tablet: Time to give the endless speculation a rest

Wide Angle Zoom: Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying....won't put an iTablet on the market.

Five improvements for IT managers in 2010

If businesses are to improve their efficiency for next year, they need to stop and reassess the basic tenets of their job.

AOL's spinoff from Time Warner to shed 2,500 jobs

As AOL moves toward become an independent company again, it will cut nearly a third of its workforce.

Gartner: SMS-based money transfer will be bigger than mobile browsing, search

Gartner issues its predictions for the 10 things our phones will be doing in 2012.

Don't forget to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 beta 3 today

Mozilla has released the latest beta its Firefox 3.6 browser software, just over one week after beta 2.