SanDisk drops a patent lawsuit bomb, sues 25 companies for infringement

Apparently SanDisk just noticed that other companies have had the nerve to ship flash-memory devices, because it's just dropped two lawsuits and an International Trade Commission action against some 25 companies, including Philips PNY, Kingston, Imation / Memorex, LG, and Verbatim. SanDisk is alleging that these companies infringed up to seven different patents, although what those patents cover has not yet been released. The two lawsuits are filed in the Western District of Wisconsin, which is known as a "rocket docket," so we should hear more about them relatively quickly, but the real action for right now is the ITC case, which is the same type of complaint that halted imports of those Qualcomm chips and could result in a stoppage of flash imports if successful. This just dropped, so we'll keep you updated as we find out more -- and peep the whole list of companies being sued after the break.

Disclaimer: Although this post was written by an attorney, it is not meant to be legal advice or analysis and should not be taken as such.

ITC case (five patents allegedly violated):

ACP-EP Memory
A-Data
Apacer
Behavior Computer (d/b/a Emprex)
Buffalo
Chipsbank
Corsair Memory
Dane-Elec
Edge
Imation/Memorex
Interactive Media (d/b/aKanguru)
Kaser
Kingston
LG Electronics
Phison Electronics
PNY
PQI
Silicon Motion
Skymedi
Transcend
TSR (d/b/a T.One)
USBest
Verbatim
Welldone Company
Zotek/Zodata (d/b/a Huke)

First patent lawsuit (same five patents as in the ITC action):

ACP-EP Memory
A-Data
Apacer
Behavior Computer (d/b/a Emprex)
Buffalo
Chipsbank
Corsair Memory
Dane-Elec
Edge
Imation/Memorex
Interactive Media (d/b/a Kanguru)
Kingston
LG Electronics
Phison Electronics
PNY
PQI
Silicon Motion
Skymedi
Transcend
TSR (d/b/a T.One)
USBest
Verbatim
Welldone Company
Zotek/Zodata (d/b/a Huke)

Second patent lawsuit (two unrelated patents):

A-Data
Apacer
Behavior Computer (d/b/a Emprex)
Buffalo
Dane-Elec
Kingston
Phison Electronics
PQI
PNY
Skymedi
Silicon Motion
Transcend
USBest
Verbatim
Zotek/Zodata (d/b/a Huke)