Cooler manufacturer Asetek is taking its competition to court over allegations of infringing upon patents it was recently granted.
“Asetek is an innovation company by DNA,” said André Sloth Eriksen, Founder and CEO of Asetek, in a statement. “These patents, some of which have priority back to 2003, spring out of our rich PC enthusiast heritage and our dedication to solving painful problems for our customers.”
The patents in question refer to Asetek’s sealed loop liquid cooling system. According to the U.S Patent Office, this patent describes ’a cooling system for a computer system […] comprising a reservoir having an amount of cooling liquid, said cooling liquid intended for accumulating and transferring the thermal energy dissipated from the processing unit to the cooling liquid. The cooling system has a heat exchange interface for providing thermal contact between the processing unit and the cooling liquid for dissipating heat from the processing unit to the cooling liquid.’
Broadly, this patent describes nearly every liquid cooling system on the market; all liquid coolers despite their many differences have a heat exchange interface, a thermal contact, and a means to pump a reservoir of coolant through the entirety of the system.
CoolIT, for its part, has been producing liquid cooling systems since 2009 but will likely have a hard time proving this as prior art since Asetek’s first began the process for patent filing in 2005.
“Our successful innovations have attracted several imitators,” noted Mr. Eriksen in the same statement. “Although competition is a keen motivator for continuous innovation and operational excellence, innovation is expensive and as such we take out patents to protect our investments.”
CoolIT is a significant OEM partner of Corsair, and it is unknown at this time how this litigation will impact the partnership.
