Toshiba Corp. said Tuesday it has filed patent infringement lawsuits against South Korea's Hynix Semiconductor Inc. both in Japan and the United States, claiming it has violated Toshiba's flash memory patents.
In a suit filed with the Tokyo District Court, Toshiba said the South Korean firm's Japanese subsidiary, Hynix Semiconductor Japan Inc., infringed on Toshiba's three NAND flash memory patents.
The suit seeks damages for the alleged infringement and an injunction against sales of infringing products.
In the United States, Toshiba has filed a lawsuit with a federal district court in Texas against Hynix Semiconductor and its U.S. subsidiaries, alleging the firms violated Toshiba's three DRAM chip patents and four NAND flash memory patents. The suit seeks compensatory damages and an injunction against sales of infringing products.
"We are determined to protect our semiconductor intellectual property and prepared to take action against any infringement of our patents," said Shozo Saito, vice president of the memory division at the Semiconductor Company of Toshiba.
Toshiba signed a cross-licensing agreement with Hynix on semiconductor products in August 1996, but the accord expired at the end of 2002 after the two firms failed to iron out differences.
Toshiba said it sought to secure "a reasonable fee for access to its patents" in the talks. "Failure to reach a satisfactory conclusion left Toshiba with no alternative other than to pursue legal recourse," it said.
Toshiba reportedly had a 36.5 percent global share of the high-capacity flash memory market for the April-June quarter, second only to that of Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea.