SanDisk sues 25 firms over patents

SanDisk has filed three patent infringement actions in the US against 25 companies that manufacture, sell and import memory.

The actions, filed in the United States District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin and in the United States International Trade Commission (ITC), seek damages.

SanDisk is also asking for 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.

The memory company alleges that the defendants have infringed various SanDisk system-level patents in USB flash drives, CompactFlash cards, multimedia cards, MP3 or media players and other removable flash storage products.

The ITC action and the first Wisconsin District Court case claim infringement of five SanDisk patents by: ACP-EP Memory; A-Data; Apacer; Behavior Computer; Buffalo; Chipsbank; Corsair Memory; Dane-Elec; Edge; Imation/Memorex; Interactive Media; Kaser; Kingston; LG Electronics; Phison Electronics; PNY; PQI; Silicon Motion; Skymedi; Transcend; TSR; USBest; Verbatim; Welldone Company; and Zotek/Zodata.

The second Wisconsin District Court case accuses 15 of those firms of breaking two additional patents.

"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.

Thompson said defendants would be offered the chance to participate in SanDisk’s patent licensing programme 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," he said.