Hynix suffered a set-back in the Tokyo District Court today when the judge ruled that the South Korean company infringed a NAND Flash patent held by Toshiba and ordered it to pay ¥7.8m ($66,000) in damages. Infringing Hynix products may not now be imported into Japan.

Hynix immediately said it would appeal against the verdict, according to an AP report.

Toshiba sued Hynix in November 2004 in both the Tokyo and Northern Texas courts. It claimed its rival had wilfully infringed a number of NAND Flash patents - three in Japan, four in the US - and asked the courts not only to ban imports of allegedly infringing products by to force Hynix to cough up damages. The US case also takes in three counts of alleged DRAM patent infringement.

The US case has yet to come to court, but in October 2005, Toshiba also approached the US International Trade Commission, asking that body to ban imports of Hynix NAND Flash products which it maintains incorporate Toshiba technology without permission.

Both cases follow the collapse of talks between the two companies over the extension of an August 1996 semiconductor intellectual property cross-licensing deal which expired on 31 December 2002. ®