HPE is suing Chinese technology company Inspur for years of patent infringement on server technology. Inspur has been on the US government blacklist since March 2023.

In the lawsuit filed in California state court, HPE claims it tried to negotiate licenses with Inspur for years. The company is now forced to file this lawsuit to protect its “investments in development and research,” an HPE spokesperson confirmed to The Register.

Inspur is alleged to have infringed five patents related to server technology:

• Systems and methods for making serial ports of existing computers available over a network.
• Determination of power consumption in IT networks.
• Method and system for emulating devices over selected communication paths through a terminal session.
• Method and system for configuring a storage array.
• Web server chip for network management.

Banned in the USA

Inspur is the largest server manufacturer in China. This is not an unimportant detail, as it has been on the dreaded US government blacklist since March 2023. Previously, major players in the technology industry worked with the company, including IBM, Cisco and Intel.

To minimize the impact of the ban, Inspur split into five units to continue selling its servers in the United States under a different brand name. The hardware has remained almost unchanged. HPE doesn’t do things by halves and is taking the Insour Group to court with all the consequences.