The U.S. International Trade Commission voted on October 9 to open a Section 337 investigation into "vertical power delivery systems, related components and computing devices incorporating such systems" — hardware used to feed power to AI servers — after a complaint from Vicor Corporation, a power-electronics maker based in Andover, Massachusetts. The case, numbered 337-TA-1526, names roughly 20 companies from Taiwan, China, Germany and the United States as respondents, according to Focus Taiwan's reporting on the commission's notice.
Among the Taiwanese respondents are Hon Hai Precision Industry, better known as Foxconn, along with Delta Electronics, Quanta Computer and Luxshare Precision Industry. Vicor's complaint, filed September 9 and supplemented the next day, alleges the accused systems infringe a Vicor patent and asks the commission for a limited exclusion order barring imports of the affected products, plus cease-and-desist orders to stop their sale in the U.S.
What's at stake
Vertical power delivery sends power more directly to a chip rather than routing it across a traditional motherboard, a design increasingly used in the dense server racks that run AI workloads. A ruling against the respondents could affect hardware that feeds some of the AI infrastructure U.S. cloud providers and chipmakers depend on, making this a dispute with implications well beyond the companies named. Vicor has spent years positioning itself as a specialist in this kind of power architecture and has previously tangled with larger contract manufacturers over similar claims, arguing that its patented designs have been copied as power-hungry AI hardware has scaled up.
The commission has not ruled on the merits of Vicor's claims. Delta Electronics has said it will respond through legal channels and that its products are not currently affected; Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs said it would offer assistance if needed and that it respects the legal process, Focus Taiwan reported. Foxconn, the island's largest private employer and a major assembler of AI server hardware for U.S. customers, has not issued a detailed public response to the specific allegations.
Section 337 cases typically take 12 to 16 months from institution to resolution. An administrative law judge will hold a hearing and issue an initial determination on whether a violation occurred, which the full commission then reviews; any resulting remedial order would take effect immediately but could still be reversed by the U.S. Trade Representative on policy grounds within 60 days. Vicor has pursued a similar complaint before: a related 2023 case against power-converter modules, also naming Delta among the respondents, remains a point of reference for how this one might unfold, though that earlier case does not by itself predict the outcome here.
