By Blake Brittain
April 15 (Reuters) - Hewlett Packard Enterprise sued Chinese cloud-computing company Inspur Group in California federal court on Monday, claiming Inspur's products infringe five HPE patents related to computing technology.
HPE said in the lawsuit that Inspur, which the Biden Administration added to a U.S. trade blacklist last year, sells several models of servers, storage devices, networking devices and software that violate its patent rights.
The lawsuit also said that Inspur sells the products through a U.S. subsidiary, Silicon Valley-based Aivres Systems, that it renamed to avoid negative publicity from the export ban.
Representatives for Inspur did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. HPE spokesperson Adam Bauer said that the company filed the lawsuit to "defend HPE's leadership position resulting from its substantial R&D investments."
Inspur is a major provider of cloud-computing servers used to power technology including artificial intelligence. The U.S. Department of Commerce banned American entities from exporting products to Inspur last March and alleged that it had been acquiring U.S. goods to support China's military-modernization efforts.
HPE, which split off from Hewlett Packard in 2015, also makes cloud-computing servers. Its lawsuit said that Inspur violates its patent rights in data storage, networking and other computing innovations.
The lawsuit said that HPE made "multiple attempts" to meet with Inspur about the alleged infringement without ever receiving a response. HPE asked the court for an unspecified amount of money damages and a court order blocking Inspur from infringing its patents.
The case is Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co v. Inspur Group Co, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, No. 5:24-cv-02220.
For HPE: Sean Cunningham, Erin Gibson, Brent Yamashita, Helena Kiepura and Amy Lydon of DLA Piper
For Inspur: attorney information not yet available
(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington)
((blake.brittain@tr.com; +1 (202) 938-5713;))
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