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SanDisk Files Patent Claims Against 25 Companies

By Tim Conneally, BetaNews

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.

Add a Comment (4 Comments)

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By Shelty

edited Oct 27, 2007 - 8:13 PM

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

By BeyondYourFrontDoor

posted Oct 27, 2007 - 12:57 PM

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

By NULLedge

posted Oct 27, 2007 - 1:37 AM

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

Score: 0

By khetos

posted Oct 28, 2007 - 1:38 PM

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

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