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."

Comments

Re:Couldn't this hurt the US?

[LostCluster]

But in this case, this is being done to protect a US-based company from being driven out of the business by a competitor that's making the same product without having to pay any of the R&D costs behind it.

Patents exist so whomever bears the R&D cost has some decent chance of profiting before everybody else rushes in and drives down the price. If you allow the patent system to fall, R&D dies with it.

Re:if you can't innovate then litigate

[LostCluster]

If your competitor didn't innovate but instead stole your innovation while you still have patent protection, you have to litigate. Otherwise, your competitor makes profits that rightfully belong to you.

Re:Patent Ownership

[WindBourne]

If the patent system was totally abolished, then few companies would bother to innovate. Without some protection of having your work stolen ( and future income derived from it ) from you, why bother at all?

Personally, I do not believe that. Companies would still inovate. They have to otherwise they would die. What would probably not happen is that inovations that require a lot of fundemental research (read expense) would not happen. Nor would companies be in a hurry to share information.

Patents were developed to allow an individual time to develop an idea. Now adays, these have been extended to the point that they are the business. I believe that we should go back to what the framers wanted; A means to allow an individual to develop.

Re:Patent Ownership

[rollingcalf]

" If they are violating Segates patents, then they SHOULD be sued..

Abuse of patent the system is wrong, but if you have received patent approval, you have the right ( obligation as far as im concerned ) to protect your patent."

Obtaining a patent for something that was invented before or is obvious to those skilled in the field, and choosing to sue for infringement of that patent, is itself an abuse of the patent system (regardless of the fact that the system allows such abuse by granting low-quality patents).

They should be sued only if they are violating the patents AND the patents are for legitimate non-obvious inventions. Occurrences of the latter are very uncommon these days.