Spansion Inc., a pure-play Flash memory vendor, has filed two patent-infringement lawsuits against Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., one at the U.S. International Trade Commission, the other in a Delaware district court.
Spansion seeks an exclusionary order from the ITC that would ban the import of Samsung products containing memory chips that Spansion said infringe on its patents. The district court complaint seeks an injunction against the importation of such devices, plus triple damages for the alleged violations.
Sunnyvale, Calif-based Spansion claimed that its lawsuits apply to products that delivered more than $30 billion in global revenue for the past five years.
Samsung’s corporate policy is to not comment on legal issues facing the company.
Spansion said it is the third-largest supplier of Flash memory, behind Samsung and Toshiba.
Although Samsung is the target of Spansion’s lawsuits, the latter is obligated to disclose the makers of “downstream” products that contain Samsung’s allegedly infringing Flash memory components, and those companies include Apple, Samsung, Research In Motion Ltd., Sony-Ericsson Mobile Communications, Lenovo and Asus, among others.
Kodak camera-phone lawsuit
Also this week, the Eastman Kodak Co. filed complaints against Samsung and LG Electronics Co. for alleged infringement of Kodak patents in the latter vendors’ camera phones. The patents are related to image capture, compression and data storage and a method for previewing video.
Kodak filed its claims at the ITC and in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York. In both cases, Kodak asked for an injunction barring the importation of products that allegedly infringe on its patents in both venues and, in district court asked for unspecified damages.
Kodak said it had working patent licenses for the cited technologies with Nokia Corp., Motorola Inc., Sanyo, Sharp, Sony Ericsson and others.
Qualcomm vs. Broadcom
On Tuesday, a federal judge found Qualcomm Inc. in contempt of an injunction imposed in December to prevent Qualcomm from infringing on two Broadcom patents.
The injunction had prohibited Qualcomm from making, using, selling or importing certain CDMA2000 1x EV-DO chips. The injunction also provided a sunset period in which Qualcomm could make and sell legacy EV-DO chips to legacy customers until Jan. 31, 2009, provided it paid royalties to Broadcom.
U.S. District Court Judge James Selna found that Qualcomm had violated both provisions.
Qualcomm said it was evaluating its options, according to the Associated Press.
