Without any hoopla or press releases, Intellectual Ventures (IV) quietly filed a second sweeping patent suit Monday charging Hynix Semiconductor and Elpida Memory, HP, Dell, Acer, Asustek - two of the largest memory chip makers in the world and a nice representative swat of the largest PC OEMs - with infringing five DDR2, DDR3 and GDDR4 memory patents in district court in Washington state.

It also named Logitech, Kingston Technology, A-Data Technology, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Pantech in the suit.

Naturally IV wants treble damages.

Then picking up the pace and recalling that it had already sued Hynix and Elpida on different patent charge in December, IV on Tuesday filed a complaint against the pair with the International Trade Commission seeking to block their products from being imported.

It's never done that before.

The patents-in-suit are apparently part of the 30,000 patents IV said+ in the suit it's bought.

The patent-aggregator and so-called troll, started by former Microsoft CTO and cookbook author Nathan Myhrvold, says it has collected close to $2 billion in licenses from folks like SAP and RIM. Evidently the companies named in the suit couldn't come to terms on the royalties asked. Discussions, when the memory companies got around to talking, go back to 2008.

IV has investors like Microsoft, Apple, the Mayo Clinic and JP Morgan Chase.

See http://www.intven.com/newsroom/insights/11-07-12/IV_Files_Complaint_with_the_U_S_International_Trade_Commission.aspx. It'll take you to the rare 53-page ITC complaint.