Costa Mesa’s Emulex Corp. on Monday fired back at spurned suitor Broadcom Corp. with a lawsuit that attacks the Irvine chipmaker’s way of doing business.

The lawsuit comes two months after Broadcom filed a patent suit against onetime acquisition target Emulex, a maker of electronics for data storage networks.

Broadcom's suit charged Emulex with infringing on 10 of its patents for chips related to high-speed networking and data storage technologies.

The earlier suit covers technologies that brought Broadcom head to head with Emulex earlier this year in a high-profile hostile takeover bid.

The bid ended with Broadcom walking away after Emulex rebuffed a final offer.

Broadcom followed up with patent suit against Emulex, which gave some the appearance of going after an emerging rival for a slice of the converged networking market, which is seen by some as big game in a few years.

Converged networks combine the speedy data storage networks with everyday networks of servers and desktop computers.

Emulex said in a statement that “it believes the Broadcom patents at issue are invalid, not infringed or both.”

In the newest lawsuit filed on Monday, Emulex escalated the legal fight and alleged anti-competitive practices at Broadcom.

It cited the legal troubles of Broadcom’s founders as well as its history of stock options backdating in an attempt to paint a picture of corrupt business practices.

“Broadcom is a company with a storied history of criminal and civil misconduct, which has become part of its modus operandi in competing in the marketplace to the present day,” the lawsuit stated. “The established pattern and practice of Broadcom engaging in illegal conduct to secure or defend a dominant market position continues to this day.”

Emulex is seeking damages, legal costs as well as an injunction on particular controller chips that run 10-gigabit Ethernet networks.

Broadcom is the top supplier of 10 gigabit Ethernet chips, with some 70% market share.