STROUD, England — SanDisk Corp., principally a vendor NAND flash storage cards for electronic equipment, has provided information on a series of lawsuits over alleged infringement of MPEG audio patents held by Philips, France Telecom and others, in a document filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday (Aug. 10).

The dispute, which was confined to The Netherlands, has been extended during the second quarter of 2006, with lawsuits filed in the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany, according to the 10-Q form from SanDisk (Milpitas, Calif.).

SanDisk sells Sansa MP3 players under its brand with varying amounts of NAND flash memory built in and varying play back times for MP3 audio material.

SanDisk’s leading protagonist is The Societa’ Italiana Per Lo Sviluppo Dell’electtronica, S.I.Sv.El., S.p.A. (Sisvel) which appears to be a patent management company. Sisvel (Milan, Italy) has filed lawsuits against SanDisk in European courts alleging certain of SanDisk’s MP3 products infringe European patents. Sisvel is itself a licensee of these patents claiming it has the right to assert the patents and license them on reasonable and nondiscriminatory basis, SanDisk said.

SanDisk said in the form it would not be required to answer on the substance of Sisvel’s claim against it filed in a Netherlands court until September 2006 at the earliest.

SanDisk also said in the 10-Q that it filed its own suit in the English High Court, Chancery Division, Patents Court, in London, on March 9, 2006, against Sisvel and owners of the patents Sisvel has tried to assert; Koninklijke Philips Electronics NV, France Telecom SA, Telediffusion de France SA, Institut für Rundfunktechnik GmbH. The trial is expected to take place in March 2007, SanDisk said