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SanDisk Reveals MPEG Audio Patent Battles
Staff Reporter -- Electronic News, 8/14/2006
NAND flash memory card giant SanDisk Corp. has revealed the broad scope of its courtroom battles, detailing lawsuits filed over the alleged infringement of MPEG audio patents held by Philips, France Telecom, and others, in a document filed last week with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The MPEG audio battle has extended over national borders, with lawsuits filed recently in the Netherlands, the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany. SanDisk has clashed mostly with the Societaí Italiana Per Lo Sviluppo Dellíelecttronica, S.I.Sv.El., S.p.A., (Sisvel), a Milan, Italy-based patent management company. Sisvel has filed suit against SanDisk in European courts, alleging that certain SanDisk MP3 products infringe upon European patents. Sisvel is a licensee of these patents and says it has the right to assert them and license them on reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis, SanDisk said in the filing.
Further in the filing, SanDisk said it has submitted requests asking the Netherlands court to strike Sisvel's pleadings as legally insufficient and seeking other procedural relief. The court is still addressing these procedural matters and the company will not be required to answer on the substance of Sisvel’s claims filed in the Netherlands until September at the earliest.
SanDisk has fired back against Sisvel and the owners of the patents Sisvel has moved to assert in the English High Court, Chancery Division, Patents Court, in London, on March 9. SanDisk filed suit against Sisvel, Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV, France Telecom SA, Telediffusion de France SA, Institut für Rundfunktechnik GmbH. The trial is expected to take place in March 2007, SanDisk said.
The battle then crossed the Atlantic: On April 13, Audio MPEG Inc., a Virginia-based patent management company that is the U.S. subsidiary of Sisvel, filed a complaint in the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging patent infringement by SanDisk. Also on April 13, Sisvel filed suit against SanDisk GmbH for patent infringement in the Mannheim District Court in Germany; Sisvel alleged that SanDisk MP3 products infringe four German patents on which Sisvel is a licensee.
