Samsung Is Hit With Patent Suits

Spansion, a struggling Silicon Valley maker of flash memory chips, filed a pair of sweeping patent infringement suits on Monday against Samsung of South Korea, the world’s largest producer of the chips.

In a complaint to the International Trade Commission in Washington, Spansion is seeking to bar the import into the United States of more than 100 million music players, cellphones, cameras and light laptop computers that use Samsung’s flash memory chips. The chips are used to store data in a wide range of gadgets.

In a federal court in Delaware, Spansion is seeking an injunction and treble damages for alleged patent violations in Samsung flash products. It estimates that Samsung sells $7 billion of infringing chips a year.

Spansion executives said they tried to negotiate a licensing agreement with Samsung over the last few years, with no progress. “This is not something we wanted to do, but Samsung has closed the door,” the chief executive of Spansion, Bertrand Cambou, said. “And they are infringing.”

The company, Mr. Cambou said, hopes the legal actions will prompt Samsung to reconsider its stance. Ideally, he added, the two companies can reach a “reasonable licensing agreement.”

If not, Spansion is prepared to pursue a legal strategy. In the 43-page complaint filed with the trade commission, the company details 10 patented technologies that it claims Samsung has used without compensating Spansion.

A spokeswoman for Samsung declined to comment on Spansion’s moves.

Cases move through the trade commission quickly, usually within 16 months, unlike the federal courts, where litigation can drag on for years. The trade commission also has the authority to bar the offending goods from the American market.

“If you have strong patents, a complaint before the trade commission can be a very powerful tool for a patent holder,” said Jeffrey D. Neuburger, an intellectual property lawyer at Proskauer Rose. “Litigation can always be used as a tool in negotiation.”

Spansion, which began in 1993 as a joint venture between A.M.D. and Fujitsu, is based in Sunnyvale, Calif. In December 2005, Spansion was spun out as an independent company, and its shares are traded on the Nasdaq stock market.

Spansion has suffered financially as flash-memory prices have plummeted; they are down 62 percent this year and could fall another 50 percent in 2009, estimates iSuppli, a market research firm. During the third quarter, Spansion lost nearly $119 million on revenues of $631 million.

When product markets sour, it is not unusual for high-tech companies to seek to harvest profits from their ideas with more aggressive licensing tactics and patent infringement suits, said Richard Doherty, director of research at Envisioneering, a technology consultant.

A year ago, Spansion bought Saifun, an Israeli company that specializes in licensing intellectual property for chip makers. “These suits are a sign of the strategy that began last year with that acquisition,” said Jim Handy, director of Objective Analysis, a semiconductor market research firm.

Spansion, Mr. Handy said, is a leader in the so-called NOR segment of the flash memory market, chips used to store software programs in all kinds of electronics goods, cars and cellphones. Samsung is the leader in NAND flash memory, mainly used to store data like music and pictures.