Taiwanese chip maker Via Technologies stepped up its legal battle with Intel Thursday, filing a lawsuit that seeks to halt sales of Intel's flagship Pentium 4 processor. Via and its subsidiary Centaur Technology filed suit against Intel in the Federal District Court for the Western Division of Texas (Austin Division), where Centaur is based, alleging that the Pentium 4 violates a Centaur patent. The lawsuit seeks to stop sales of the Pentium 4 and requests that monetary damages be paid to Via and Centaur. The action follows a barrage of suits filed in Taiwan earlier this month, in which Via alleged that Intel illegally pressured motherboard makers not to buy Via's Pentium 4 chipset, and that Intel employees destroyed promotional materials--such as balloons--advertising the chipset. The Texas lawsuit claims that the Pentium 4 violates Via and Centaur's U.S. Patent Number 6,253,311, jointly owned by the two organizations, which deals with formats in which numeric data may be stored on a microprocessor.
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