An investigation into patent infringement allegations against computer maker Acer Inc. won't delay the launch of new notebook models, an Acer executive said Thursday.

New consumer and enterprise notebook models are due out from Acer in June, but the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) said it will investigate claims by Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) that Acer's desktop and notebook computers violate HP patents. HP wants the ITC to issue a permanent order for Acer to stop using the patented technology and to block Acer products from being imported to the U.S.

The infringing technology includes "desktop and notebook computers and digital display devices, both as stand-alone devices and as integrated components of a notebook computer," according to an ITC statement.

But the dispute won't stop Acer from introducing new Aspire notebooks for consumers and TravelMate notebooks for business users, said Rudi Schmidleithner, president of Acer America Corp., a subsidiary of Taipei, Taiwan-based Acer Inc.

"This has been going on for quite some time," said Schmidleithner of the HP dispute, at Acer's U.S. offices in San Jose, California. He said HP's infringement claim may be designed just to distract Acer as it launches new products.

Besides the ITC complaint, HP filed a lawsuit against Acer on March 27 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, and then later amended it with additional infringement claims, said Christina Schneider, a spokeswoman for HP.

Neither Schneider nor Schmidleithner would say whether settlement negotiations are underway in the case. Patent disputes are often settled by the patent holder licensing its technology to the other company for a price.

The Acer Aspire will come in two models and feature the new Intel Centrino platform for mobile computing, which uses the Core 2 Duo processor. The new Centrino features improved wireless Internet access and greater performance for playing video games and streaming content from the Web, such as movies and TV shows. Pricing for the Aspires starts at US$1999.

Acer also uses processors from Intel rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc., which is introducing an improved mobile computing processor. The AMD processor will also be built into future Acer notebooks.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

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