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Seagate Accuses Cornice of Patent Infringement
dncsky1530 writes "Seagate's recently filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware against Cornice of Longmont, Colo. Now it is seeking an order from the U.S. International Trade Commission to exclude Cornice disk drives and any systems or products using or containing Cornice disc drives from entry into the United States. Seagate asserts that Cornice is infringing on seven of its U.S. patents that relate to several areas of disk drive technology."
Sounds like Cornice really is thieving -- Western Digital has also filed patent infringement charges against them. This is one case where I'm actually FOR filing suit.
I feel dirty saying that here...
I mean the patent laws are anti-business
Eh? I guess that's true if your "business" is using the fruits of the research and development of other companies without any permission or compensation. But I'm afraid most business, at least those interested in developing new things, appreciate that they can use patents to help ensure they make some money to pay off that fat R&D bill before everyone else just reverse-engineers a product and puts out a knock-off version for half the price immediately.
How will small businesses and internationals compete against US businesses when all international products are up for review.
The same way they always have -- through innovation, superior products, better service, better prices, etc. You don't have to steal to compete.
everything in moderation
No the equal/shared limited liability concept a la LLC is a long running company concept in Europe, the format has it's formal roots in the Co-op movement in Germany in the 1850-60 although this sort of partnership has existed much longer without a formal recognision, the LLC moniker however is only used in the USA and this news thus probably refers to the US operation, nothing unusual about a company going to court in another country after all, actually all too frequent these day's........
Unusually a portion of large companies in the USA has chosen to use the LLC format while in Scandinavia only lager companies that grew from co-op movements have used it and most of them are actually moving the other way, ie morphing into limited companies.
You do realize that virtually every other country ALSO has patent laws of various types -- some stricter than the U.S., some looser, but most countries have a patent system of one type or antoher.
At least the U.S. has an enforcement mechanism for patents, unlike India or China...
"That's not even wrong..." -- Wolfgang Pauli
Some of you are in a real hurry to convict Cornice with out having a grasp of what the situation is. They are a start-up with good technology and good sales. Basically they produce diskdrives that use very few parts. Cornice was started by a group that use to make Maxtor, Seagate, etc. They know well what the patents are. My understanding is that the company is not infringing, but both groups hope to pressure Cornice into trading patents with them.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maxtor bought Quantum, not Seagate.
Because Seagate and WD haven't invested as much into R&D as you think.
Cornice make tiny HD which are cheaper per meg compared to flash memory, which means multimedia, pda, phone, camera makers will be buying from the likes of Cornice and not Seagate.
These are the very markets which are exploding right now but are limited by poor storage capacity.
Futhermore, the statutory penalty for patent infringement is damages, or at least a reasonable licensing fee. You might be surprised how often the reasonable licensing fee is actually more money than damages, since the damages calculation is complicated and difficult to prove.
The point is that many companies use infringement suits a bargaining chip to extract higher licensing fees.
I didn't include 6,455,845 - Ion packet generation for mass spectrometer because it made no sense as to why this was included.
5,452,159: Magnetic parking device for disk drive
( Sep, '95)
A magnetic parking device for a disk drive includes a magnet and a member for containing the magnetic field produced by the magnet. The magnetic field containing member has an air gap which is substantially parallel to the magnet flux lines of the magnetic field so that there is no fringing of the magnetic field outside of the gap. The device magnetically captures a magnetically permeable capture member provided on the actuator of a disk drive without contacting the capture member and only when the actuator enters the gap in the magnetic field containing member
5,600,506 - Feb, '97
Apparatus and method for determining the position of a transducer relative to a disk surface in a disk drive system
Abstract
A method and system for generating a position signal indicative of the position of a transducer with reference to a fixed reference point on the surface of a disk within a disk drive system. The system is comprised of two major elements. The first element is a disk divided into sectors and has Z data tracks where each sector includes a preamble area that includes a servo band comprised of 0.75*Z consecutive overlapping quadrature servo patterns and gray scale band comprised of 1.5*Z consecutively addressed gray scale areas that have been recorded across all data tracks. The second element is a position generator that generates the position signal from the relative magnitude of each of the four servo bursts of a quadrature servo pattern of the servo band and the gray scale address of the gray scale area of the gray scale band that is read by a transducer when the transducer reads the preamble of a sector.
6,146,754 - Nov, 2000
Substantially isotropic magnetic recording medium comprising a seedlayer
Abstract
A high areal density magnetic recording medium exhibiting high Hc, high SNR, high S* and substantially isotropic magnetic properties is achieved by depositing a thin seedlayer before depositing the underlayer. Embodiments include heating the seedlayer under vacuum in the presence of residual oxygen to induce appropriate crystalline orientation and surface morphology for nucleation and growth of the underlayer and magnetic layer having substantially isotropic magnetic properties.
6,324,054 - Nov, 2001
Wrap around shock absorber for disc drives
Abstract
The shock absorber apparatus for a disc drive is a molded polymeric enclosure adapted to receive and retain a disc drive. One preferred embodiment of the present invention has a shock absorbing material of a first thickness adjacent a critical region of the drive and a second thickness of shock absorbing material adjacent a non-critical region of the disc drive. The first thickness is greater than the second thickness in order to absorb a greater shock load to protect the critical region of the disc drive.
5,596,461 - Jan, '97
Space efficient housing configuration for a disk drive #7
Abstract
A space efficient disk drive housing is described. The disk drive housing comprises a base member having a top, a bottom, and an outer perimeter having length and end portions of preselected dimensions and a cover element comprising a top surface and side walls depending downwardly from the top surface. The cover element has length and width dimensions corresponding to the dimensions of the length and end portions of the base member so that the cover element can be secured to the base member to form the housing. The cover element is provided with a first raised portion to provide a height dimension within the housing sufficient for topmost portions of a spindle motor and head stack assembly of a disk stack assembly of a disk drive. Remaining portions of the top surface of the cover element providing a continuous, single PCB support surface. A set of support posts is provid
Pain is merely failure leaving the body