Patent Law

Martyn Williams of IDG News Service writes today, January 24, 2008, at InfoWorld:

Japan will block imports of some memory chips produced by Taiwan's Nanya Technology after local chip-maker Fujitsu lodged a request with the country's customs authorities.

In August last year Fujitsu won a patent infringement case against Nanya at the Tokyo District Court. The lawsuit concerned a patent related to a technology for improving the speed of DDR SDRAM (double data rate synchronous dynamic RAM) memory chips, and the court case came about after discussions between the companies broke down.

A day after winning the case, Fujitsu filed with Japan Customs to block import of the DRAM chips in question. DRAM is used as the main memory inside personal computers and some consumer electronics products.

With Fujitsu's request to suspend imports granted, the government will begin inspections of Nanya DRAM chips coming into Japan, Fujitsu said Thursday. If the chips are judged to include the technology that was the subject of the August court case, the chips will be blocked from entry, Fujitsu said.

Nanya Technology could not immediately be reached for comment.