IBM has gone to the International Trade Commission to complain that Taiwan-based Asustek Computer and its North American subsidiary Asus Computer International are infringing three of its PC patents.

It wants the ITC to bar the infringing products from landing on US shores.

IBM said it made "repeated attempts" to reach a licensing agreement and that "Ausustek either must license or stop using IBM's patented technology."

It claims the Taiwanese company's notebooks, barebones systems, servers, routers and other components are treading on an IBM power supply patent (No. 5,008,829); an automatic fan speed control patent (No. 5,249,741) and a patent that makes a cluster appear as a single host on the network (No. 5,371,852).