Cooler Master coughs up $600K to Asetek for liquid cooling infringement

Cooler Master has ponied up $600,000 to Asetek, a company that specializes in CPU and GPU liquid solutions for a variety of markets, after losing a dispute in court over patent infringement.

This case dates back to December 2014 when the U.S. District Court ruled against Cooler Master in all of the patent infringement claims brought against it by Asetek. A jury ordered Cooler Master to pay Asetek damages equal to a 14.5 percent royalty on all-in-one liquid cooling product sales since 2012 that were found to be using Asetek's patented designs.

Asetek took exception to Cooler Master's all-in-one Seidon family, a line of sealed-loop coolers that required no maintenance. Those coolers were found to have violated U.S. patents 8240362 and 8245764, both belonging to Asetek.

Cooler Master appealed the ruling, but found no relief from the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which affirmed the previous court's decision and damages award.

"This award signifies another successful defense of Asetek’s intellectual property," said André Sloth Eriksen, founder and CEO of Asetek. "As part of efforts to build and maintain market share, we closely review and assess all competitive offerings for infringement of our patents. We are pleased with our success in defending them."

The matter officially comes to a close as Cooler Master's $600,000 payment was received today by Asetek. Meanwhile, Cooler Master has since discontinued its Seidon line in the U.S. and continues to sell a range of all-in-one liquid cooling solutions that have been altered to avoid infringing on Asetek's patents. The new coolers are part of Cooler Master's MasterLiquid series.

Paul has been playing PC games and raking his knuckles on computer hardware since the Commodore 64. He does not have any tattoos, but thinks it would be cool to get one that reads LOAD"*",8,1. In his off time, he rides motorcycles and wrestles alligators (only one of those is true).