Matsushita yesterday announced that it has sued chip rival Samsung Electronics, alleging infringement of Matsushita's patents covering memory chip technologies following the break down of two-year negotiations between the companies.

Matsushita has asked the New Jersey Federal Court to award it the sum of $100 million in damages. It claims infringements of three patents which cover DRAM, or dynamic random access memory, the most common type of memory in personal computers.

The case could take years to resolve. It's the latest in a plethora of chip patent disputes among the world's leading chip design and manufacturing companies.

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