Patent Hoarder Sues Acer, Asus, MSI and Lenovo for Video IP Infringement

The U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) has decided to start an investigation based on a patent infringement complaint filed by VideoLabs, a patent aggregator, against four big PC makers from China and Taiwan. The plaintiff asks the ITC to issue a limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders to prevent the importation of select devices by Acer, Asus, MSI, Motorola Mobility, and Lenovo into the U.S.

VideoLabs asserts that PCs (and other devices) made by Acer, Asus, MSI, Motorola Mobility (owned by Lenovo), and Lenovo featuring certain GPUs with video processing capabilities infringe four patents owned by the patent aggregator. VideoLabs filed the complaint against the PC makers with the U.S. ITC on July 1, 2022. The Commission will now conduct an investigation and if it finds that those computers infringe patents owned by the plaintiff, it may ban sales of certain products by the aforementioned companies in the U.S.

Three U.S. patents in question — 7,769,238, 8,139,878, 8,208,542 — cover video coding methods developed in early 2000s by Panasonic. Meanwhile, the fourth patent — 7,372,452 — describes a method of video playback on portable devices with automatic adjustment according to a rotating direction of the screen. It was originally issued to Samsung in early 2000s. The patents can seemingly be applied to almost all modern devices with video processing and display capabilities, including PCs, media players, smartphones, tablets, and even televisions.

Acer, Asus, MSI, Motorola Mobility, and Lenovo have yet to issue comments on the investigation by the ITC.

TOPICS

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.