Partitioning the vertex set of a bipartite graph into complete bipartite subgraphs

Given a graph and a positive integer k, the biclique vertex-partition problem asks whether the vertex set of the graph can be partitioned into at most k bicliques (connected complete bipartite subgraphs). It is known that this problem is NP-complete for bipartite graphs. In this paper we investigate the computational complexity of this problem in special subclasses of bipartite graphs. We prove that the biclique vertex-partition problem is polynomially solvable for bipartite permutation graphs, bipartite distance-hereditary graphs; and that it remains NP-complete for perfect elimination bipartite graphs and bipartite graphs containing no 4-cycles as induced subgraphs.