A U.S. court on Tuesday ordered Toshiba Corp. to stop blocking Western Digital Corp.'s access to databases of their chip joint venture, as the business partners engage in an ongoing dispute over the Japanese company's plan to sell its memory unit.

The temporary order by the San Francisco County Superior Court comes after Toshiba blocked Western Digital's access to chip development data in their joint operations last month.

Toshiba, reeling from massive losses stemming from the bankruptcy of its former U.S. subsidiary Westinghouse, hopes to sell Toshiba Memory Corp. to raise cash, while Western Digital says the planned sale would violate their joint venture contract.