IBM announced that it has filed a complaint against ASUSTeK (based in Taiwan) and its North American subsidiary, ASUS Computer International, with the United States International Trade Commission. The complaint details the alleged infringement of IBM patents by certain ASUSTeK computer products and components, and requests an exclusion order against the importation of infringing ASUSTeK computer products and components into the United States.
IBM states that it has made repeated attempts to reach a licensing agreement between the companies. IBM’s position is that ASUSTeK either must license or stop using IBM’s patented technology.
IBM’s complaint identifies three patents that are infringed by ASUSTeK products imported into the U.S. These three patents cover important aspects of computer systems, including power supplies, computer cooling and computer clustering capabilities. The ASUSTeK computer products that are said to infringe include notebook computers, so-called barebones computer systems, servers, routers and various computer components.
The specific patents asserted in the IBM complaint are: U.S. Patent No. 5,008,829 – "Personal computer power supply", No. 5,249,741 – "Automatic fan speed control", and No. 5,371,852 – "Method and apparatus for making a cluster of computers appear as a single host on a network."
