Asetek turns up the pressure by demanding sales halt of watercooled Radeon R9 Fury X cards

Asetek's watercooling patent war keeps raging, the latest development involves AMD's watercooled Radeon R9 Fury X. The firm has issued cease & desist orders to AMD and Gigabyte, ordering the firms to halt sales of watercooled Radeon R9 Fury X products.

“Asetek’s attorneys have recently sent cease and desist letters to Gigabyte, demanding that it cease selling Giga-Byte’s GEFORCE GTX 980 Water Force (sold under at least model number GV-N980WAOC-4GD) because it contains the Seidon 120M found by the court to infringe Asetek’s patents.

Asetek’s attorneys have also written a cease and desist letter to AMD, demanding that it stop selling its Radeon R9 Fury X product, because it infringes Asetek’s patents. Our attorneys have had some difficulty obtaining a Gigabyte GV-N98TXTREME W-6GD, but we expect to receive and analyze one very soon for infringement.”

GamersNexus speculates the legal action could result in a drying-up of availability of some of these cards, depending upon how serious leading retailers handle this news:

Whether or not AMD and Gigabyte cooperate with these C&Ds remains to be seen, but even objection to or delay of compliance will not stop the possibility of collateral damage through retailers. Depending upon how seriously leading retailers handle this news, primarily Newegg and Amazon, there could be a drying-up of availability for some of these devices even as the legal encounter develops.

The liquid cooling solution of the Fury X is supplied by Cooler Master, which was sued by Asetek for infringing watercooling related patents:

“There is no licensing agreement in place with Cooler Master, nor do we plan to offer any in the foreseeable future. Asetek sued Cooler Master and CMI USA, Inc. (Cooler Master’s US affiliate) for infringement of Asetek’s US Patent Nos. 8,240,362 and 8,245,764, and the jury found that the Cooler Master products at issue infringe Asetek’s patents and awarded damages to Asetek. The judge also entered an injunction prohibiting Cooler Master and CMI USA from importing or selling the accused products in the US, and the judge awarded enhanced damages because of continued sales after the jury’s verdict. The injunction states ‘[a]s used herein, Infringing Products shall mean the following Cooler Master products: Seidon 120M, Seidon 120XL, Seidon 240M, Seidon 120V, Seidon 120V Plus, Nepton 140XL, [Nepton 280L], Glacer 240L, and products not more than colorably different from them.’”