IBM has gone to the International Trade Commission to complain that Taiwan-based Asustek Computer and its North American subsidiary Asus Computer International are infringing three of its PC patents.

It wants the ITC to bar the infringing products from landing on US shores.

IBM said it made "repeated attempts" to reach a licensing agreement and that "Ausustek either must license or stop using IBM's patented technology."

It claims the Taiwanese company's notebooks, barebones systems, servers, routers and other components are treading on an IBM power supply patent (No. 5,008,829); an automatic fan speed control patent (No. 5,249,741) and a patent that makes a cluster appear as a single host on the network (No. 5,371,852).

Asustek, a contract manufacturer for Apple and Dell, has its heart set on becoming the fifth-largest notebook maker in the world by 2010. It's tied up with Intel to create the cheap, and apparently popular, Eee PC, expecting to sell five million of the little critters next year, creating a problem for One Laptop Per Child's XO.