(10/25/2005 4:34 PM EDT)

WASHINGTON — Four Japanese electronics giants are the target of a patent infringement lawsuit filed Wednesday (Oct. 25) by a U.S. intellectual property management company.

Cited in the claims filed by TPL Group (Cupertino, Calif.) in U.S. District Court in eastern Texas were Fujitsu, Matsushita, NEC Corp. and Toshiba. The four companies are alleged to have infringed at least three of the ten patents covered by the Moore Microprocessor Patent Portfolio.

The ten fundamental patents included in the portfolio were filed in the 1980s and cover fundamental techniques for designing microprocessors, DSPs, embedded processors and SoCs. TPL manages the portfolio.

The lawsuit covers patents for multiple instruction fetch technology, separately clocking CPU and I/O along with use of multiple cores and embedded memory, TPL said.

TPL added in a statement that its patent-infringement claims against the four Japanese electronics manufacturers cover ``a wide variety of end-user products, including [PCs], servers, workstations, home theater systems, digital TVs, video games, DVD recorders/players, mobile handsets and automotive electronics.``

TPL said it filed the patent lawsuit in the eastern Texas court because it operates under ``rocket docket`` rules that enable patent infringement cases to move to trial in less than a year.

We are over 6 months now.