Hard Drive Imports to be Banned?

Arathon writes "Apparently the International Trade Commission is beginning an investigation that could lead to the banning of hard drive imports from Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba, among others, on the grounds that they fundamentally violate patents held by Steven and Mary Reiber of California. The patent apparently has to do with "dissipative ceramic bonding tips", which are important components of the drives themselves. Obviously, a ban would be unthinkable, and yet the ITC has 45 days to settle on a fixed date for the end of the investigation. If the patents are found to be violated, and the Reibers do not allow those patents to be bought or otherwise dealt with, the importation of almost all hard drives would actually be ceased."

Comments

useful arts

[Speare]

And this is promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts, how, again?

Re:useful arts

[Bert64]

Well, it could spur drive makers to create a replacement technology to get round the ban.
But more likely they'd just revert to some older non infringing technology, resulting in inferior drives for any country which enforces the patent.

Re:useful arts

[Daniel Wood]

I don't know the validity of the patent nor do I know if it was a submarine patent, so I can't comment on that aspect. While the ban would have severe financial impact on most of the magnetic storage industry, if not the entire economy, this could be the real kick in the pants that SSD's need. This has the potential massively increase density and lower costs of SSD's in a very short timeframe. If they can cram 16GB on a SDHC card(Due January 08), imagine how much storage they could put in a 3.5" or even a 1.8" SSD. That said, this ban will not be enacted. The federal government will not allow a ban on imports of magnetic HDDs. Not only because of the financial devastation it has the potential to cause, but because it would severely inconvenience the government as well. Remember the whole BlackBerry patent suit?

Re:useful arts

[aurispector]

This kind of smells like a patent mugging to me. If all these companies were using the patent, why did it take so long to file suit? Did all these companies ignore due diligence? Is there some sort of standards that were hashed out while the patent was kept underwater like in the Rambus case?

I really think there needs to be some sort of limit on how and when patent holders can do this sort of thing, coupled with some way standards bodies can file public notice regarding intent to use a particular process or design. First to file is not a bad starting point, but prior art could come into play in the context of such a public notice process, e.g. standards board says we are making stuff like this...public period to comment...patents not claimed by 180 days invalid for this case...NO profit for patent holders!

The muggings gotta stop

Re:useful arts

[arivanov]

Or the country simply voiding the patent on national security grounds. Same way USA voided the Right's brothers patents on aircraft design when they proved to be insufficiently cooperative in WWI. Case of been there, dunnit will do it again. While the congress and administration critters could not quite justify that in the RIM case, in this one they may end up doing it.

Re:useful arts

[Dunbal]

Well, it could spur drive makers to create a replacement technology to get round the ban.

      Causing them to reinvent the wheel in a wasteful manner, instead of building on today's technology to develop tomorrow's technology.

Re:useful arts

[BLKMGK]

Yes because it's so much better to sink piles of money into R&D only to have some other company copy the technology and sell it for less due to their not having to recoup the R&D costs.

Get a clue.

This is how China is taking many American companies (and others) to the cleaners. Why bother to innovate or invent something when you can simply copy what someone else has done at little to no cost? Done often enough and the folks who do the innovative things are going to find themselves bankrupt - then what? I'm all for patent reform and I think software patents need to be rethought but you make it sound as if ALL patents are somehow "bad" and that's just naive. Yes, a limited monopoly can be had with the right patent and this is why they need to eventually expire - and do! The drug industry, abusive as it is, is a good example of this. If you've EVER bought a generic drug than you've seen this process at work. Sadly the drug companies have combated this not by striving for better research but my making minor changes to existing drugs and re-patenting and by spending more on advertisement than they do R&d. Why do we allow them to advertise prescription only drugs to the public exactly?

Re:useful arts

[Anonymous Coward]

You get a clue. You're deeply naive, having bought the "patents reward innovation" Big Lie hook, line and sinker.

sell it for less due to their not having to recoup the R&D costs. That's the risk of R&D. the innovator still has first-mover advantage. Patents allow the risk-averse to compete unfairly with risk takers. You're committing something akin to the broken window fallacy. In reality, EVERYONE is better off if innovations can be freely built upon, even other innovators. No innovator stands aloof. Frankly, I'm disgusted by the american infofascistic "dream", it flies in the face of millenia of human progress dependent on open sharing of information.

Why bother to innovate or invent something when you can simply copy what someone else has done at little to no cost

First mover advantage. COMPETITION. The essence of free market capitalist economic theory - the only way to stay in business would be to innovate continuously. Patent monopolies exist to slow innovation to levels manageable by the establishment of bankers and lawyers and such social parasites.

and re-patenting This is only possible because the patent system exists. Destroy the patent system, and they won't be able to do that.

(The drug industry specifically also has other problems - overzealous FDA regulation for instance.)

Follow the law or change it

[tjstork]

This case is a clearcut proof that the patent system doesn't protect the little guy and the little guy hitting it big with a patent is a total myth.

By all rights, the law that the article refers to is designed to ensure that the little guy has another means of recorse to protect his or her patent. But instead, these companies are going to find a judge that kinda agrees with them, and they will be allowed to import these drives despite the patent violation.

Of course, the right thing to do would be to change patent law so that this sort of infringement is something everyone is allowed to do. But oh no, we still want to leave the patent laws on the books, to protect the big guy, from guess who, the small guy.

Re:But do prohibitive prices promote progress?

[Ihlosi]

Does that promote the progress of science and useful arts?

It promotes science when everyone suddenly has to find a way to work around the patent.

Re:It swings both ways

[DAldredge]

One would think that an IT Manager (or consultant as line 1 doesn't mesh with line 3) who posts on /. would know that Maxtor was bought out by Seagate who is on the list.

Patents are not evil

[iknownuttin]

I'm seeing a lot of posts here about the evils of patents and how they stifle innovation. They don't. And unfortunately, folks forget the story about the inventors of the MRI machine.

These guys spent decades and millions of dollars of their own and investors' money creating this machine. When they get it to market, General Electric and Hitachi just steals the idea and markets it. Pretty much destroying the company that was started by the inventors. They then sued over another decade or so finally getting a settlement. IF they just sat back, others would have profited off of their work. That's an injustice if I've ever seen one!

Without the inventor with the hopes of making it big and getting a return to their investors, they WILL BE NO INCENTIVE TO INNOVATE. Some of the MRI Story. (Wikipedia has some of the business stuff wrong)

more history

I don't care about the very few patent trolls or whatever, I know there's abuse, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water.