Appeals court revives Ritek patent suit

A US federal appeals court on Friday revived a patent-infringement lawsuit by SanDisk Corp against Taiwanese rival Ritek Corp (錸德) over flash-memory cards used in electronics.

SanDisk, the world's biggest maker of the cards, claimed Ritek and its distributors Memorex Products Inc and Pretec Electronics Corp infringed a patent for memory cells. Flash memory stores data whether a device is on or off and is used in digital cameras, personal digital assistants and MP3 players.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington ruled that a trial judge erred in his interpretation of some aspects of the patent. The appeals court threw out the judge's finding of no infringement and sent back the case for further proceedings.

"I'm about as pleased as I can be with the decision," said Earle Thompson, chief intellectual property counsel for Sunnyvale, California-based SanDisk. He said he was confident that SanDisk would win a court order stopping the rival memory cards.

Ritek lawyer Charles Sanders said the company will continue to challenge the patent. Other issues related to infringement and the validity of the patent remain in the case, he said in an interview.

"This just means our original victory for Ritek has been vacated and we go back," said Sanders, of Fish & Richardson in Boston.

"It doesn't mean that anyone's won. It's far from over. It just means we didn't end it, which of course would have been nice," he said.

Taiwan-based Ritek is the world's second-biggest maker of recordable discs behind CMC Magnetics Corp (中環). It makes the memory cards that are distributed by Memorex, a company owned by Hong Kong's Hanny Holdings Ltd, and Taiwan-based Pretec (希旺).

A fourth company, Power Quotient International Co (勁永), previously settled the case and agreed to stop selling its CompactFlash or PC-ATA cards in the US and sell only cards made by companies that license SanDisk's patents.

SanDisk also has settled infringement lawsuits filed over the patent against Lexar Media Inc and Viking Components Inc.

Thompson said there is no other pending litigation over the patent, although SanDisk is involved in other patent cases.

"We were waiting for this decision to come down so we didn't file any additional suits," Thompson said.

"I'm not going to comment on our future litigation strategy, but this opens the door," he said.