The legal battle between Taiwan-based MediaTek and VIA Technologies continued last Friday as MediaTek said it had requested in a US court a preliminary injunction against VIA and its client AOpen on direct and indirect import of products using VIA’s CD-ROM firmware, which allegedly violates MediaTek’s copyright and trade secrets, according to DigiTimes.

In addition to the preliminary injunction, MediaTek also requested that the US court order VIA to give written notice recalling its products carrying the CD-ROM firmware or any other software programs derived from the firmware.

The requests came after MediaTek filed a lawsuit against VIA and AOpen in late June of last year in the US District Court for the Southern District of California (Los Angeles Division). In its complaint, MediaTek claimed that VIA and AOpen used designs protected by its patents in VIA’s CD-ROM controller chips and AOpen’s CD-ROM drives.

With information obtained during the discovery process, MediaTek managed to examine the source code of VIA’s CD-ROM firmware and determine that the company had violated MediaTek’s copyright and trade secrets, according to MediaTek.

In response, VIA said that it had not received the legal documents and would comment only after seeing the papers.

The two Taiwanese IC designers have brought each other to court since last year. Earlier this year, VIA filed lawsuits against both MediaTek and its client Lite-On IT in the US District Court for the Northern District of California (San Francisco Division) for alleged patent infringements by MediaTek’s DVD-ROM, CD-RW and combo controller products.