Smaller, lesser known (to Joe Blow consumer) tech companies have been known to take on the big guys with lawsuits that may or may not hold up in court, but this one seems to hold a bit of water. At least it appears that way based on the Reuters and WSJ reports on the matter.
Spansion, an offshoot of AMD, is accusing Samsung and four of its U.S. subsidiaries of infringing on multiple patents and demands reparations from the South Korean electronics juggernaut. Two separate lawsuits were filed today with the International Trade Commission and the U.S. District Court in Delaware. Spansion chose to file with the ITC because they’ve been known to hammer down a tad faster and have the “power to impose exclusion orders” on those being sued, which would put a hamper on Samsung and many companies who rely on their flash memory chips. That list of companies includes Apple, Asus, Kingston, Lenovo, PNY, RIM, Sony and Sony-Ericsson, which means many of our favorite gadgets may not be imported to our great country.
Spansion estimates that Samsung was able to pirate $30 billion from 2003 using their infringed patents.
The patents surrounding the lawsuit are as follows:
