IBM Files Patent Complaint Against ASUS
 

When a big company like ASUS has a patent infringement filed against it, it can often use its financial strength to overcome any problems. However, when the company filing the complaint is computer giant IBM, things start to look a bit worse. Earlier today, IBM filed a complaint against ASUS claiming that both its own-brand computers, as well as the contract computers its makes for other brands such as Apple and Dell, infringe upon three patents held by IBM. Big Blue was a little vague on the specifics of the patents, however it is asking the US government to ban imports of certain computers made by ASUS due to infringements regarding “important aspects of computer systems, including power supplies, computer cooling and computer clustering capabilities” on products including notebooks, servers, routers and some components. Apparently ASUS continued to sell computers using IBM’s technology after a licensing agreement expired on 31st December 2004. ASUS has not yet commented on this matter.

Source: Reuters

Excellent! They(ASUS) announced earlier this year that they would be slowly reducing their presence in motherboard and similar desktop related markets and increasing their presence in the laptop/mobility market (hence EeePC). Something like this might speed up that transition. I can’t wait for the day ASUS is out of the desktop market.

All I care is that they continue making motherboards, since they are the best there is.

Agreed. All I've ever bought is ASUS motherboards, and from past experiences with other peoples rigs, and hand-me-down motherboards I've recieved from various sources over the years, ASUS boards have taken some abuse and offered exceptional configurability, stability and peace of mind.



I wonder how this will all sort out for IBM, though - they've been having a real rough time of it the last year or two, between being partially bought by a Chinese corporation, slowly declining stock shares, and a few other things . . . I really get the feeling IBM is starting to become desperate. It's rather unheard of for two major big-time corporations to get to this point, because of the major financial battle that would ensue from both sides. Usually both companies try to resolve the issue under the table.

Same opinion here. ASUS ftw!

asus makes by far some of the best if not the best boards out there and i dont think i could go back to anything else

IMHO, their S939 boards sucked.