VIA Technologies today announced that it has begun filing lawsuits against Intel Corporation in US and Taiwan courts for the infringement of VIA patents by Intel processors and chipsets. Separately, VIA has initiated litigation against Intel for violations of the Republic of China Fair Trade Law and the willful destruction of VIA property by Intel representatives and employees. As part of these complaints, VIA is seeking damages for losses incurred and for injunctive relief.
To tell the truth VIA’s arguments sounds so astonishingly shocking, that we wouldn’t dare paraphrase them. Take a look yourselves:

"Intel processors and the Intel Pentium 4 processor compatible 845 chipset infringe VIA’s patents," commented Richard Brown, Director of Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "Intel has not obtained a license from VIA for the Pentium 4 microprocessor or the 845 chipset. The lawsuits will be aimed at stopping the infringement of VIA’s patents by these products," he said.

Of course, the whole thing sounds ridiculous and seems too hard to take seriously. And actually, VIA doesn’t need us to. All they really need is a scandalous and long-lasting lawsuit, just the same they had with Intel concerning the Apollo Pro133 chipset some time ago. At the time when the lawsuit was in full swing and dozens of lawyers were sweating over it 24 hours a day, the chipset and the mainboards based on it were selling pretty well, so that Intel had to give up the affair. They simply claimed some sum of money as a fee and acknowledged VIA chipsets with PC133 SDRAM support "de jure". No doubt that VIA is trying to follow the same scenario this time as well.