Judgment Against Cooler Master Confirmed, Damages Increased, Injunction Issued

H

HardOCP News

[H] News
Joined
Dec 31, 1969
Messages
0
After losing a patent infringement case late last year to Asetek, Cooler Master filed a motion for a new trial. Instead of getting a new trial, the judge in the case denied Cooler Master's request and increased the royalty rate from 14.5% to 25.375%. The courts also issued a permanent injunction barring the company from selling infringing products in the United States. Ouch.

The jury unanimously ruled in favor of Asetek, and awarded damages based on a 14.5% royalty rate. In a post trial motion, CMI demanded a judgment as a matter of law and a new trial. The court yesterday denied CMI's demands, and instead substantially followed Asetek’s requests and issued a permanent injunction barring CMI and its parent Cooler Master from selling certain infringing products into the Unites States.
 
Weren't they also the sames ones to make a knock off case of the Fractal Design R5?
 
Thanks. Never heard of the original company but wow, nice stuff. I might keep them in mind if I ever build a rack mount box with power (yeah that will happen)
 
Cooler Master also, back in the day, made the same case as Antec did, the SOHO Dragon cases.
 
It's not part of the current lawsuit but is similar enough I expect them to sue for that one also.
 
Call me stupid...That looks like every other water cooling system out there no? What exactly did they steal?
 
ron.lolly said:
Curious if any of the offending tech is in the FuryX
Click to expand...

It's not impossible but it is doubtful. It's in the differences between GPU waterblocks and CPU water blocks. Many GPU blocks are also designed to cool the VRAM on the card and so there are significant differences in the basic layout of the blocks.
 
Gmok Bonecrusha said:
Call me stupid...That looks like every other water cooling system out there no? What exactly did they steal?
Click to expand...

On the outside many water blocks look the same, but on the inside there can be significant differences.

One company sent me a block to review, it was a new design from a new company. It was when the single inlet, duel outlet designs were first becoming a thing, the idea that the two outlets would reduce back pressure and increase the flow rate through the block.

Anyway, these guys weren't really engineers and it showed in their design, the block was too "deep" meaning the water flowed into the top of the block an back out of the outlets without ever really pushing down against the base of the block, that area of water near the block wasn't being disturbed by the flow. It performed poorly. Their first attempt at a fix was to replace the center outlet with a hose barb that extended deeper into the heatsink forcing the water against the base plate. This helped a lot. Later they actually redesigned the blocked shortening the height and this helped more. But I think it was too great a problem for a brand new business to overcome, they had already screwed their opening launch and spoiled the big splash of a new name and exciting new product. By the time they got things straight there were half a dozon other three barbed designs and some from bigger names. Fizzle, die.
 
ron.lolly said:
Curious if any of the offending tech is in the FuryX
Click to expand...

If it is, as has happened in previous cases where a company unknowingly bought and used a stolen product from another company, AMD will be allowed to continue selling the Fury X, and Cooler Master will be forced to buy back any extra units they originally sold. However newer models on the production line must switch to an alternative cooler, and it's possible any money Cooler Master was originally supposed to get from Fury X sales, will instead go to Asetek.
 
Ouch. I really like some of Cooler Master's stuff. I don't use any water cooling, but their HAF cases are freaking great. I hate it when companies screw up like this.
 
Chunder said:
If it is, as has happened in previous cases where a company unknowingly bought and used a stolen product from another company, AMD will be allowed to continue selling the Fury X, and Cooler Master will be forced to buy back any extra units they originally sold. However newer models on the production line must switch to an alternative cooler, and it's possible any money Cooler Master was originally supposed to get from Fury X sales, will instead go to Asetek.
Click to expand...

I thought the judgment said 25% royalty or something, not "any" money.
 
There isn't much information in these posts or articles. I'd argue a troll in that respect. Largely, these thing are manufacturer designed products that they license and sell to hardware producers. I don't doubt the design, and even the final product is produced from the same factory or a joint factory. CM does like to play with these vanilla manufacturers though, and it occasionally earns them accolades for an excellent piece of hardware, but more often or not, they realize that these guys manufacture for SOME OTHER CONTRACT and are selling you something at a steal. Of course CM knows this, but I dunno that they should be the ones prosecuted. They can still profess ignorance if the manufacturer fulfills an order of the same manufactured materials that another competing company requested.

On the other hand...In China this is pretty common practice and the manufacturers really control this sort of thing. They WILL sell and manufacture anything to anybody.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top