Monday, November 15, 2004
Toshiba has filed a lawsuit against Hynix Semiconductor Inc of Korea, complaining that it is infringing Toshiba's patents related to NAND Flash EEPROM architecture, in the Tokyo District Court of Japan and in the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
The company is appealing Hynix's infringement of three patents in the Japanese court and its infringement of four patents in the US court. Both suits in Japan and the US are based on the same patents, related to the physical architecture of NAND Flash EEPROM, Toshiba said. The company has also filed a suit against Hynix for infringement of three other patents for physical architecture of DRAM in the US District Court. Although Toshiba applied these patents in Japan as well, "We decided not to include them in the lawsuit in Japan, based on the different patent strategy from our US company," a company official said.
Toshiba and Hynix had a cross-licensing agreement for NAND Flash EEPROM technologies until the end of 2002, since when negotiation for extending the agreement has been stymied over the terms of conditions such as the licensing scheme and patent fees. "We took legal action for the particularly important patents, which were determined to be indispensable to achieving equivalent performance, among the many patents included in the cross-licensing," a Toshiba spokesperson said.
Although Toshiba is not planning to seek an injunction to stop the importing Hynix's products, "We still might seek an injunction in the US International Trade Commission (ITC) and Tokyo Customs," the spokesperson added.
By: DocMemory
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