Hitachi sues three Taiwanese PC monitor makers

Japan’s Hitachi has filed suit in a U.S. court against three Taiwanese PC monitor makers over their alleged breach of three patents, after more than a year of negotiations between the companies broke down, Hitachi said on Friday.

In the suit, filed June 6 with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Hitachi alleges that PC monitors made by Amtran Technology, Proview Electronics, and Tatung violated three U.S. patents held by Hitachi related to how the PC and monitor communicate with each other, according to Hiroshi Inami, a spokesman for Hitachi in Tokyo.

The nature of the technology covered by the patents means they apply to LCD (liquid crystal display), plasma, and CRT (cathode ray tube) monitors, Inami said.

Hitachi is seeking damages and an injunction prohibiting the three companies from using the patents in their products and importing and marketing the products in the U.S., according to Hitachi. The suit also names U.S. affiliates Proview Electronics International Holdings, Proview Technology, and Tatung Co. of America.

Hitachi is also investigating other companies for possible violations, Inami said, without giving more details.

“We have been talking to Tatung and the (other two) for well over a year, and the discussions go back for a long time before that. But they are not responsive to our requests and so we sued,” Inami said.

Hitachi filed the suit in the U.S. because it believes this will cause the greatest potential damage to the companies. Hitachi is demanding damages to press home its claims, he said.

“These three companies are all in the top 10 in terms of monitor sales in America, and it’s a big market for them. The amount of damages we are asking isn’t so huge, but it’s big enough to show them we are serious about protecting our IP (intellectual property),” he said.

Two of the Taiwanese companies said they were surprised by Hitachi’s announcement.

The company hasn’t received any kind of notice from Hitachi about the lawsuit, according to Scottie Chiu, a spokesman for Amtran Technology. Based on information from news reports, Chiu said the suit appears to be a small matter that the companies could have worked out between them.

“We don’t understand why they’ve chosen to make this issue public,” he said. Amtran still hopes the two companies can conclude the matter amicably outside the courtroom.

A spokeswoman for Tatung who did not want to be named said her company had not received any formal notification from Hitachi or the courts regarding the alleged patent violations. She also said Tatung did not expect the case to disrupt its business.

The majority of Tatung’s PC monitors are made on a contract basis for other vendors, she said, so any infringement issue should be handled by the vendor, not Tatung.

Proview could not be reached for comment.

The Hitachi patents involved in the case are U.S. patent number 6,247,090, filed with the U.S. Patent Office in 1999, and numbers 6,549,970 and 6,513,088, which were both filed in 2000, according to the Patent Office’s Web site.