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

Re:useful arts

[bstone]

The patents here appear to be for the tools used to build the drives. IANAL, but I thought that patents covered only the end product. In this case, the patented tool can be claimed, but not everything ever built with the patented tool. This claim would need to be filed in the country where the tool was used, assuming that country has issued a patent on the invention.