IBM vs. ASUS

ASUS在去年資訊月中推出Eee PC，在市場上造成轟動，據ASUS自己預計，Eee PC明年的銷量有望達到380萬部。隨即遭IBM向ITC控告侵害其US5,008,829、US5,249,741和US5,371,852等三項專利，據IBM表示，與ASUS的專利許可協議於2004.12.31.到期後，ASUS仍繼續在銷售使用該項IBM專利技術的電腦。因此，IBM要求，ASUS停止使用相關專利技術，或向IBM支付專利費用。

US5,008,829
Personal computer power supply
Filing Date:June 14, 1990
Issue Date:April 16, 1991
Abstract
This invention relates to personal computers, and more particularly to personal computer power supplies for supplying electrical power to electrically operated components which manipulate or store digital data. The power supply has a controllable component for responding to the presence and absence of a low voltage direct current electrical signal by enabling and disabling the supply of electrical power to the data processing and storage components, and a signal generator circuit operatively connected with the controllable component and with an alternating current electrical main supply for controllably deriving from the main supply a low voltage direct current signal for delivery to the controllable component, whereby a user of the microcomputer may control energization of the electrically powered data processing and storage components by controlling the application of the low voltage direct current signal from the signal generator circuit to the controllable component.

US5,249,741
Automatic fan speed control
Filing Date:May 4, 1992
Issue Date:October 5, 1993
Abstract
A method of cooling a computer having a plurality of components and at least one variable rate cooling unit including the steps of obtaining a cooling requirement for at least one of the components and varying the rate of at least one of the cooling units based on the obtained cooling requirements. In addition an apparatus for cooling a computer having a plurality of components, the apparatus including at least one variable rate cooling unit, an apparatus for obtaining a cooling requirement for at least one of the components, and an apparatus for varying the rate of at least one of the cooling units based on the obtained cooling requirements.

US5,371,852
Method and apparatus for making a cluster of computers appear as a single host on a network
Filing Date:October 14, 1992
Issue Date:December 6, 1994
Abstract
The present invention provides a method and apparatus for enabling a cluster of computers to appear as a single computer to host computers outside the cluster. A host computer communicates only with a gateway to access destination nodes and processes within the cluster. The gateway has at least one message switch which processes incoming and outgoing port type messages crossing the cluster boundary. This processing comprises examining certain information on the message headers and then changing some of this header information either to route an incoming message to the proper computer node, port and process or to make an outgoing message appear as if originated at the gateway node. The message switch uses a table to match incoming messages to a particular routing function which can be run to perform the changes necessary to correctly route different kinds of messages.

Smart的看法
ASUS推出的Eee PC的訂價在US$199 ~ 299間，勢必對市場造成衝擊，從IBM的訴訟策略來看，IBM一定也預判Eee PC將來會占有市場，才會提出專利訴訟，否則不會如此的大費周章。