The inner workings of the often shady international memory chip distribution business will go on public display at Bristol Crown Court in the UK on May 20, when James Willard, former CEO of the defunct British memory chip distributor Deep Blue Technology, goes on trial on counterfeit charges. Deep Blue was one of several British companies that were raided by police looking for stolen chips in April 1996. Police were guided in their operation by an investigation team from IBMÆs semiconductor division, who were in part motivated by the fact that several IBM facilities, including its PC manufacturing site in Greenock, Scotland, had been robbed of substantial quantities of memory and processor chips. Willard, who has always insisted he was running a bona fide business, was not initially charged with any offences, but his stock of memory chips and SIMMs modules, which he valued at more than $500,000, were impounded by police. He later began a failed civil action to recover the fast depreciating items. While executives of at least one rival company were later charged and found guilty of handling stolen goods, Willard was only charged with counterfeiting. Deep Blue, IBM complained, was committing counterfeiting offences by buying IBM chips on the open market, and repackaging them in boxes stamped with the IBM trademark. Willard intends to mount a vigorous defense that will allege that IBM is attempting to use its market muscle to maintain control of the channels through which its chips get onto the market. The defense is hoping to show that what Deep Blue was doing was normal, acceptable practice in the chip business. Ironically, Deep Blue once complained to IBM about misuse of its trademark – the supercomputer which beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov was also called Deep Blue.
