IBM announced today that it had filed a lawsuit against ASUSTeK and its North American subsidiary, ASUS Computer International with the FTC. The suit alleges that ASUS has infringed on IBM patents with certain ASUS products.

IBM is seeking an exclusion order against the importation of infringing ASUS products. IBM says it has attempted to reach licensing agreements with ASUS and IBM says ASUS must license the technology or stop using it.

The patents at the core of the IBM suit are U.S. Patent No. 5,008,829: Personal computer power supply, U.S. Patent No. 5,249,741: Automatic fan speed control, and U.S. Patent No. 5,371,852: Method and apparatus for making a cluster of computers appear as a single host on a network. IBM says the infringing ASUS products include notebook computers, bare bones computer systems, servers, routers, and other computer components. ASUS is an OEM for many computer and electronics vendors and a loss to IBM in this case could have far-reaching repercussions for other manufacturers as well.

Via IBM.