SanDisk Sues 25 Companies for Patent Infringement

dnormant writes "Suits have been filed against 25 companies by the SanDisk corporation this week, as the company looks to stop businesses from shipping products it alleges are infringing on its work. SanDisk has filed suits against everyone from MP3 player manufacturers to USB hard drive creators. The list of defendants is staggering, and MacWorld notes if Sandisk succeeds it could have repercussions outside of the courtroom. 'The company filed two lawsuits in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin, one alleging the infringement of five patents in the ITC complaint, and another one including two additional patents not involved in the ITC action. The court and ITC complaints could affect the prices and availability of products made by companies targeted in the suit if SanDisk wins and the companies are barred from importing products into the U.S.'"

Comments

Great

[nurb432]

Another attempt to kill the golden goose.

Low flash prices couldnt be left alone, could they?

Re:Great

[betterunixthanunix]

"We will continue to grow in this market, despite a 25-fold increase in competition. How? We will just demand that the competition pay us for the privilege to compete with us. What's that? Increase in our stock price?"

Re:Great

[Vexorian]

It has never stopped Microsoft...

Re:Great

[SCHecklerX]

but the sandisk products are some of the least expensive on the market (the sansa series blows the ipod nano away)

Re:Great

[MBraynard]

When you create a technology (Sandisk own the creator of nonvolitile SSM) and then 26 other companies start to rip off your technology without a license, that is only referred to as competition in Slashdotland.

You will notice that Apple, MS, Creative, etc. are not on the list. They compete against Sandisk but somehow found out how to legally.

Re:Great

[homer_ca]

Check Sandisk's price chart. Their stock price is in the toilet, down from mid 50's a few weeks ago to under 40 today. I think the market correctly interpreted this lawsuit as an act of desperation. It dropped $1.70 a share today.

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, a troll with a retarded pompus sig. You must be a hit with the ladies.

Almost content-less article

[tygt]

Unfortunately TFA has nearly zero content other than what the synopsis states. There is no mention of which patents are involved, any reaction by the companies being sued, and no statement given as to WTF it's all about.

Re:Almost content-less article

[gstoddart]

Unfortunately TFA has nearly zero content other than what the synopsis states. There is no mention of which patents are involved, any reaction by the companies being sued, and no statement given as to WTF it's all about.

Indeed. I read both of TFAs, and I can't find a single mention of what aspect of drives is meant to have been infringed.

Surely they don't have a patent on the idea of an "external device which acts as storage" or removable media ... I should think the floppy drive or any number of items would be sufficient prior art for that.

Does anyone know the basis for these suits? They've sued everyone, but the details are very sketchy.

Cheers

Re:Almost content-less article

[Intron]

I'm guessing it's number 5,602,987 which was struck down in 2003 when they sued others and reversed on appeal more recently.

Re:Almost content-less article

[ThosLives]

If that's the one, it should be shot down again due to recent SCOTUS rulings: all the items in that patent simply do what anyone with knowledge of those components expects them to do when you put them together; you're just using memory as memory, and you're keeping track of how much you use so you don't use things too much.

Nothing non-obvious about that.

Now, if there's a particular wear-leveling algorithm, then that could be patentable, but the the general idea should not be.

Re:Almost content-less article

[spazoid12]

That's true, but it's necessary. Posting stories with actual detail has been patented and they don't want to be sued for infringing...

Re:Almost content-less article

[gstoddart]

I'm guessing it's number 5,602,987 [uspto.gov] which was struck down in 2003 when they sued others and reversed on appeal more recently.

Wow. A method of using a slightly different form of non-volatile storage to behave the same as other well established forms of non-volatile storage. Secondary clauses for implementing a filesystem type concept over top of it. Possibly enclosing the whole damned thing in a box and adding cables to be compatible with existing data protocols.

Unbelievable.

Cheers

Re:Almost content-less article

[pravuil]

The way it looks it probably is the problem. From their corporate section they claim the following:

SanDisk currently has approximately 780 issued U.S. patents, and more than 400 foreign patents, and is the only company, worldwide, that has the rights to both manufacture and sell every major flash card format , including CompactFlash®, SD(TM), miniSD(TM), microSD(TM), MultiMediaCard(TM), Reduced Size MultiMediaCard (RS-MMC(TM) ), Memory Stick PRO(TM) and related Memory Stick® products, xD-Picture Card(TM) and USB flash drives.

Their claim seems pretty broad. It's hard to tell what's going on until they present their argument.

Re:Almost content-less article

[DustyShadow]

Was it obvious to combine them? we're talking 1993 here. I don't think the result has anything to do with the obviousness determination.

Re:Almost content-less article

[Yenchatech]

Reading this patent document, I think there might be some prior art in that IBM has been doing memory failure / remapping in DRAM cells for years (at least as far as I know.) Perhaps it doesn't apply if the memory technology is different?

Re:Almost content-less article

[tepples]

Was it obvious to combine them? we're talking 1993 here. The PCMCIA defined PC Card, including a standardized ATA-like interface to solid-state memory cards, in 1991. Reserving spare sectors for use when existing sectors have failed had been standard practice in ATA hard disks by 1993. What elements do you suggest were combined non-obviously?

Re:Almost content-less article

[DustyShadow]

I haven't read the claims and I only skimmed the abstract. You have to read the claims to determine what the patent really covers because the abstract is not part of it. Since I haven't read them and have little knowledge of PCMCIA, I can't tell you whether this is obvious or not. But I can tell you, just cause something seems similar, it doesn't mean it's obvious.

Re:Almost content-less article

[liquiddark]

Luckily for the patent holder, there was no prior art, and it certainly wasn't obvious to people in the field!

Re:Almost content-less article

[m2943]

Yes, sector remapping was obvious in 1993 as well; it's a standard technique you use with many storage devices, since many storage devices sooner or later develop bad sectors.

Re:Almost content-less article

[WNight]

Write-Once-Read-Many drives existed for quite a while before then, and they're the very definition of wear leveling. Everything gets written once and only once. Changes go elsewhere but override the earlier copy.

Extra sectors and silent remapping are both obvious ideas. The specific way of implementing them may be patent-worthy, but not the general idea.

Re:Almost content-less article

[rtb61]

Why Wisconsin. Sandisk is a californian company is there any reason in the suit why it is filed in Wisconsin. Is there something different in Wisconsin courts, some bias that favours them or some legal requirement.

Funny thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

...that around here (Sweden) SanDisk has always been considered as a cheapish manifacturer of questionable quality.

Re:Funny thing is...

[ericrost]

Not just around Sweden. Same holds true in the US.

Re:Funny thing is...

[KeepQuiet]

I agree and they have the crappiest customer service ever. I had a sandisk mp3 player which died for no apparent reason. I emailed customer service that saying that I cannot turn on the player. They replied "Can you please turn on the player and tell me what version number do you see?" Note to self: avoid Sandisk.

Re:Funny thing is...

[FatMacDaddy]

I know what you mean, but it's not funny. In fact, it makes perfect sense. If SCO were producing valuable software they probably never would have gone off on their anti-Linux litigation. Same with these guys: if they were burning up the market with quality products, they wouldn't have to be suing others. I guess successful companies keep patents as a defense and lesser companies use them to keep their outdated business models or revenue streams going.

Re:Funny thing is...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

SanDisk has always been considered as a cheapish manifacturer of questionable quality.

Their hardware may be cheap, but they had some interesting product ideas. The U3 stuff was interesting, for instance.

Re:Funny thing is...

[anagama]

Interesting? What a bunch of crap U3 is. I recently bought a 4gb USB device -- says on the back it works w/ Max/Linux/Windows. When I stuck it in my powerbook, I get the drive plus a "CD" with three installers on it. Ok I thought, I'll just reformat. Didn't fix it. So I decided I'd use a linux box to reformat -- can't do it. The partition looks like a read-only CD-ROM. After some googling, it turns out there is a program from U3 to eliminate this fake CD partition -- of course the crap only works with windows. I don't have a windows box -- I tried fixing it on a friends machine, he has parallels and XP, but the damn thing wouldn't even mount on the windows box. Somewhere between my friend's office and mine, I lost the USB device. I lost the USB device because I hadn't put it on my key ring. I didn't put in my keyring because the U3 crap made the device perform annoyingly.

The U3 developers are retards. The highest demand to remove their crap is probably from non-windows users. So they go and release a windows only removal solution. I had never heard of U3 before and I hope they die a slow painful death in bankruptcy.

Re:Funny thing is...

[sherpajohn]

Yeah but "around here" for the likes of you is under a bridge somewhere. You should get out more, see the sun...whoops you're stone!

Re:Funny thing is...

[DigitAl56K]

around here (Sweden) SanDisk has always been considered as a cheapish manifacturer of questionable quality.

Which is not really relevant to their patent claims and this suit.

Re:Funny thing is...

[mrbluze]

Maybe the patents relate to SanDisk's methods of producing an inferior product at a lower price, which the competitors are hoping to do also.

Re:Funny thing is...

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't bought one of those, and I never will, but I believe it should be easy to wipe them using Linux.

0) Insert drive... your distro probably auto-mounts the drive
1) unmount the drive: sudo umount /dev/sda1
(note "umount" not "unmount", and change "sda1" to whatever is correct for your drive. Type "mount" to see a list of mounted stuff and you should be able to spot the flash drive. Also, you may be able to unmount using your GUI desktop: right-click on the mount icon and choose "Unmount" or "Eject")

okay, you have the drive plugged in and not mounted.

2) sudo cfdisk /dev/sda

cfdisk is a friendly character-based partition editor. I like it much better than plain linux fdisk. Again, replace "sda" with whatever is appropriate for your drive. Note that cfdisk has a menu at the bottom with commands. (You can probably use GNU "gparted" partition editor with your GUI, if you have that installed... try that if you don't like character-based stuff)

Using the partition editor, select all partitions on the drive and delete them. Then create a new partition that fills the disk, and set it to whatever file system type you like. For a removeable flash drive I suggest FAT32.

3) write out your changes, exit partition editor.

4) format your flash drive with the appropriate file system. If you chose FAT32, use this command: mkfs.vfat (If you use GNU parted you can probably use it to create the file system too....)

Good luck and happy linuxing.

Re:Funny thing is...

[Randle_Revar]

U3 is crap. PortableApps came first and is better.

Re:Funny thing is...

[dslbrian]

PortableApps came first and is better.

Better yet is PortableApps running inside a Truecrypt volume off the USB drive. Half the apps I run are that way. Makes for easy backups too, just copy the single Truecrypt file. Next thing I'm going to try is putting PortableApps and Cygwin both inside Truecrypt running off the drive (probably need a 4-8GB drive for that).

*looks at san disk cards*

[Anonymous Coward]

They've been fast, reliable, and not terribly expensive...

Shame I'm not buying another SanDisk after this.

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[DigitAl56K]

Shame I'm not buying another SanDisk after this.

Really? Why?

Every time someone tries to enforce a patent claim people make these knee-jerk statements.

If their claims are legitimate and based on genuinely innovative technology, and they're also working in good faith to make reasonable licensing deals with infringers, then maybe you should be boycotting the parties being sued for infringing with no license instead.

The patent system is wildly abused, but some times it does protect innovators that drive the industry forward. It would seem to me that SanDisk does at least ship a boatload of products using the technology that they (claim to) have developed, and are not simply acting as a patent licensing business.

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[cyberfunkr]

And why won't you? They are still a perfectly good company. Why stop buying from them JUST because they are suing companies over a patent?

I mean.. I get it. "Information wants to be free! Or at least able to see other people." But if it's a real patent and SanDisk wants compensation for time and money invested developing the patent... Why do you people insist on boycotting them?

Does a business become evil the moment it tries to protect an investment?

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[bchernicoff]

So, by voting with your wallet in the way you have described, you are choosing to support companies that steal the inventions of others rather than the company that innovated? Wow, this gives me a lot of incentive to invest my own time and money to bring to market this device I have been working on.

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[Zencyde]

You must be new here. :D

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[Anonymous Coward]

If their claims were legitimate why sue now? Why not back when all these companies started to infringe said patent years ago? And if it were "truly innovative" wouldn't they have been trumpeting it from the rooftops in an attempt to get licensees? This is almost certainly some patent troll lawsuit probably because they are being beaten in the market by the defendants named in the suit and they don't really like that.

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[IgnoramusMaximus]

The patent system is wildly abused, but some times it does protect innovators that drive the industry forward.

No it doesn't. Patents have nothing to do with "driving industry forward". Remove patents and the competetive pressures remain unchanged, which is what drives innovation. And you cannot prove otherwise. Progress existed long before patents were even thought of.

Or you mean you are spouting an item of industrialist faith, upon which the utterly misguided idea of patents is based, without any proof whatsoever that it is indeed the case, as it were an established fact.

In fact patents do far more harm to progress then they bring merit to it, and that is before one factors in the current patent system corruption.

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[tepples]

So, by voting with your wallet in the way you have described, you are choosing to support companies that steal the inventions of others rather than the company that innovated? Voting with one's wallet expresses one's view that the USPTO should never have approved the patent given the state of the art at the time the inventor applied for the patent.

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[obarel]

Of course patents drive the industry forward.

They motivate people to find alternatives to expensive yet ridiculously obvious "inventions", thus making huge progress in fields such as compression, encryption, search technologies etc.

Not exactly the intent behind the system, but it seems to work pretty well. If GIF hadn't been patented, we wouldn't have PNG now.

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[m2943]

If their claims are legitimate and based on genuinely innovative technology, and they're also working in good faith to make reasonable licensing deals with infringers, then maybe you should be boycotting the parties being sued for infringing with no license instead.

The legal presumption is that an issued patent is valid. However, in the real world, a presumption that a patent is invalid because of prior art or obviousness seems quite reasonable, until someone makes a convincing argument to the contrary. So, yes, it's a knee-jerk reaction, and it's a good one.

Now, can you make a clear and convincing argument that SanDisk's patents indeed represent innovation?

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[IgnoramusMaximus]

Not exactly the intent behind the system, but it seems to work pretty well. If GIF hadn't been patented, we wouldn't have PNG now.

But any innovation of this kind is not counter-balancing the horrendous expense to consumers resulting from these patents (and other inane laws like copyrights), their attendant litigation and countless vampire hordes (otherwise known as "lawyers") who feed on all of this. Not to mention the ability of certain pigopolists to spread FUD about their supposed "intellectual property" somehow contaminating all the alternatives you mentioned, thus scaring away bewildered consumers back into the herd on its way to the slaughterhouse with the herdsmen cracking their whips made of innuendo of just-around-the-corner lawsuits (and in some cases raids and arrests).

Re:*looks at san disk cards*

[laughingcoyote]

I believe you're stretching "stealing" even farther in this case than it usually gets stretched around here. Sandisk does not appear to have made any major innovations here. They took an obvious and logical step based on vast amounts of prior art, they didn't come up with some major new idea. The objection here is, that should never have been patentable at all. Taking an obvious route is not stealing, even if someone else took that route first.

Umm....

[Anonymous Coward]

From the summary:

MacWorld notes if Sandisk succeeds it could have repercussions outside of the courtroom

Not to nitpick or anything, but that's a really pointless statement. Court decisions always have repercussions outside of the courtroom. There wouldn't be much point to having court decisions if they didn't.

"The court has decided that the patents are valid and the defendant must refrain from distributing products that implement the patented technology. But only inside this courtroom, of course. Out in the real world you can do whatever you want... Have a nice day."

Re:Umm....

[pthor1231]

I wish I had mod points for you good sir.

Re:Umm....

[Endo13]

Not only that, the supposed "quote" in the summary isn't in the MacWorld article at all. Unless it got removed for being stupid, it's a complete fabrication by whoever wrote the stupid summary.

Re:Umm....

[kidcharles]

I think this phrase is to make a distinction between a case which would set an important precedent versus one that would not. If a case does not establish a new precedent, it would change little "outside of the courtroom," i.e. it would not effect much outside of those involved in the case directly. If I go to court to contest a parking ticket and I still have to pay, nothing is happening "outside the courtroom." If I contest a parking ticket and it sets in motion a series of decisions saying that parking tickets are unconstitutional, there would be a profound effect "outside the courtroom."

Re:Umm....

[Arguendo]

MacWorld notes if Sandisk succeeds it could have repercussions outside of the courtroom Not to nitpick or anything, but that's a really pointless statement. Court decisions always have repercussions outside of the courtroom. There wouldn't be much point to having court decisions if they didn't.

Actually, not to further nitpick or anything, but most patent suits don't end in court decisions; they end in settlements. And settlements don't typically have much effect outside of courtrooms. (Unless it's a truly massive settlement - but even the RIM/Blackberry settlement didn't really affect consumers.)

If Sandisk is very successful and an injunction issues, then that could have a much bigger impact outside the courtroom than if money simply changes hands. My point is simply that a lot of different things could happen to resolve the suit. Some results would affect us all, some would probably only affect the defendants' earnings.

So hard to read the summary without crying.

[Actually, I do RTFA]

MacWorld notes if Sandisk succeeds it could have repercussions outside of the courtroom.

Any case that does not have repercussions outside of the courtroom is worthless. What point is the submitter trying to make?

Re:So hard to read the summary without crying.

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to point out to the Redundant moderator: spot the time stamps of the two messages: 7:19pm & 7:21pm. That's a difference of between 61 secs (19:19:59-19:21:00) and 179 secs (19:19:00-19:21:59; obviously the second has hit reply before the first had been noted on his computer, possibly even before the first was posted if the second is a slow typist/thinker - this message has just taken me 120+ secs to write.

Re:So hard to read the summary without crying.

[danskal]

Any case that does not have repercussions outside of the courtroom is worthless. What point is the submitter trying to make?
I understood that the case will have repercussions for people/companies other than those that are directly involved in the court case : i.e. competitors, customers etc.
Perhaps some products will be taken off the market, expensive licensing deals that affect product pricing or whatever.

Re:So hard to read the summary without crying.

[Anonymous Coward]

most likely meaning there wont be any cheap flash devices for the US. which people will notice.
not just a cash settlement which the public wont notice.

Press Release

[bazald]

The official press release is here:
http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/PressRoom/PressReleases/PressRelease.aspx?ID=4025

Is it public what patents they are suing over yet? There seem to be no real details anywhere...

The List

[urcreepyneighbor]

SanDisk is suing: ACP-EP Memory, A-Data, Apacer, Behavior Computer (d/b/a Emprex), Buffalo, Chipsbank, Corsair Memory, Dane-Elec, Edge, Imation/Memorex, Interactive Media (d/b/aKanguru), Kaser, Kingston, LG Electronics, Phison Electronics, PNY, PQI, Silicon Motion, Skymedi, Transcend, TSR (d/b/a T.One), USBest, Verbatim, Welldone Company, and Zotek/Zodata (d/b/a Huke).

Re:The List

[oyenstikker]

Come on dude, make a list.

• ACP-EP Memory
• A-Data
• Apacer
• Behavior Computer (d/b/a Emprex)
• Buffalo
• Chipsbank
• Corsair Memory
• Dane-Elec
• Edge
• Imation/Memorex
• Interactive Media (d/b/aKanguru)
• Kaser
• Kingston
• LG Electronics
• Phison Electronics
• PNY
• PQI
• Silicon Motion
• Skymedi
• Transcend, TSR (d/b/a T.One), USBest
• Verbatim
• Welldone Company
• Zotek/Zodata (d/b/a Huke)
  

Re:The List

[niko9]

Come on dude, make a list.

We could make a list. Or, Why I could make a hat, or a brooch, a pterodactyl. . .

Re:The List

[Kalriath]

So, it looks like we can rule out Memory technology (or they'd be going for Hitachi as well, and Samsung) as the target. Although, I don't recall Corsair and PQI making anything else.

Re:The List

[iggy_mon]

dude... let me fix that fix for you

...
# Verbatim
# Welldone Company
# Zotek/Zodata (d/b/a Huke)
# ...
# Profit!

you are 200,000 login ID's before me, there is no excuse for this lapse in protocol ;-)

Re:The List

[Anonymous Coward]

Several of these brands are remarked and sold as SanDisk brand by Chinese on eBay. While I have no idea what patents are in question, I'm going to throw out the idea that this might be a good thing if it shutsdown the garbage brands.

Re:The List

[Hoi Polloi]

They left out The Illuminati, the Queen of England, and JR "Bob" Dobbs

Go SanDisk

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't let the thieves get away with it!

It's times like these...

[spungo]

... that make me wonder why I didn't study Law. (Oh -- I remember now... it's 'cos I have a soul... )

Re:It's times like these...

[Fred_A]

... that make me wonder why I didn't study Law. (Oh -- I remember now... it's 'cos I have a soul... ) That's not a problem, as a law student you would have been entitled to a free soulectomy.

Re:It's times like these...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I come from those are called 'student loans'

I hope this isn't the first step...

[Overzeetop]

FTFA:

Our goal is to resolve these matters by offering the defendants the opportunity to participate in our patent licensing program for card and system technology," said E. Earle Thompson, chief intellectual property counsel at SanDisk I certainly hope there's been some serious negotiation leading up to this. Otherwise, that's quite a dickish statement to make.

Re:I hope this isn't the first step...

[James Kilton]

Isn't there some sort of clause in patent litigation that states something along the lines of: "if percieved patent infringements aren't brought to light within [5,6 - 10] years of the product appearing on the market, then the owner of the patent is not allowed to sue"? I mean, flash technology has been around for a LONG time now, and this suit is being brought out only now?

I can't imagine anything is going to happen here, especially against powerhouses like Corsair, Kingston, and PNY.

Re:I hope this isn't the first step...

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope they get nuked in court!

Re:I hope this isn't the first step...

[Dan Ost]

Not as far as I know. Only trademarks need timely enforcement.

Re:I hope this isn't the first step...

[stevesliva]

I can't imagine anything is going to happen here, especially against powerhouses like Corsair, Kingston, and PNY.

What's especially surprising is that the company suing, SanDisk, actually manufactures things. Usually the plaintiff is not involved in manufacturing products that could be alleged to infringe upon the patents owned by the defendant. Expect to see several of these companies to countersue... they should be able to find some vague patents in their portfolios to throw back at SanDisk.

Re:I hope this isn't the first step...

[darkmeridian]

It's popular for companies to have licensing programs based upon a threat of litigation. The first step is always to convince the other guy that he needs your license, so you prepare a court case and say, "If we had to sue you for patent infringement, here is what we would say..." Then the licensee hopefully will see the error of his ways and pay you money. When things go public, it probably means that negotiations broke down a bit and the patentee is putting the screws onto the customer.

TransMeta just received a settlement from Intel for $250 million. Pretty much the same thing.

Wow

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Are these guys getting legal advice from Darl McBride?

Note who is not being sued....

[jdgeorge]

A list of companies NOT named might be interesting, too. Among them are:
Apple
Samsung
Micron/Lexar
Sony

Each of these seems to be a major player in these markets....

What deals (if any) do these guys have with SanDisk so they aren't getting sued?

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[betterunixthanunix]

They probably either buy chips from SanDisk, or they have a license deal with SanDisk.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[rattlesoft]

From SanDisk press release: "SanDisk is the original inventor of flash storage cards and is one of the world's largest suppliers of flash data storage card products, using its patented, high-density flash memory and controller technology." See this is the main reason why our patent system is completely messed up. If you patent flash memory technology, you shouldn't have the right to stop all other companies from making similar products. Wheres the fair market? In this case, it looks like the common saying "Any publicity is good publicity", won't work for San Disk. Their products have never been jaw-dropping or even cheap.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[SailorSpork]

My guess would be that these companies only buy the infringing parts from 3rd party suppliers, they don't make the infringing products (whatever they are) themselves.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[farker haiku]

it's called the "Our lawyers can kick your lawyers ass" deal.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[owlstead]

In this case, it looks like the common saying "Any publicity is good publicity", won't work for San Disk. Their products have never been jaw-dropping or even cheap. The quality of their products don't have anything to do with this. Anyway, SanDisk does have some seriously interesting products. I was planning on upgrading my fan-less PC with a 40 MB/s Compact Flash card + firewire drive. These are products that any serious photographer will or should love, and which are unavailable from any other manufacturer.

I'm opting for dual USB sticks instead, but only because of cost (I'll just RAID-0 them). For the price of the reader I will be able to buy 16 GB of USB-stick memory with ease.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[rnswebx]

See this is the main reason why our patent system is completely messed up. If you patent flash memory technology, you shouldn't have the right to stop all other companies from making similar products. Wheres the fair market?

Hmm, what? Our patent system is certainly flawed, but your argument is exactly what patents are for. If I develop a way to do something that hasn't been done before, then you either need to figure a new way to do it or license my technology. Maybe we disagree on the underlying idea that I should be able to prevent people/companies from simply copying an idea, using their big bank accounts to market it into oblivion, and eventually making fortunes off of my invention. I like patents, as long as the idea is actually new and the technology is not obvious. PS: I don't know what SanDisk's lawsuit is based on as the articles seem to be light on details, so I can't really comment to this particular case.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[CastrTroy]

See this is the main reason why our patent system is completely messed up. If you patent flash memory technology, you shouldn't have the right to stop all other companies from making similar products.

That's exactly why the patent system exists. Take that away, and there's no need for patents at all. I think one thing that should be addressed is these submarine patents. If you don't complain about an infringing product, you should lose your right to patent protection. With millions of patents on the books, it's impossible for anyone to verify that they aren't infringing on a patent. You shouldn't be able to wait around for years while people use your invention, and then sue every company is existence, for billions of dollars because they were infringing.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[rattlesoft]

Yea. I think I messed up my point. In a sense, I was talking about basic technology that everyone is already using. If it's something no one else has done, then of course. But in this case, theres alot of companies already out there. Some patents are frivolous and basic.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[shimage]

No. That may be how the patent system is used today, but that's not why we have the patent system. Patents exist to keep people from trying to hide how a new invention works. Basically, in return for explaining (in detail) how one's new thing works, we allow you to have a temporary monopoly. (Don't believe me? look at the etymology of the word.) It's to increase the sharing of ideas. If someone can produce a product that does the same thing, but without looking at someone else's patent, then the patent is a burden on society.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[etresoft]

It seems clear that SanDisk has a valid patent on slow, flaky USB flash drives. I have purchased both SanDisk products and the products of the companies they are suing. I can tell that the same, crappy technology was used in all of them. My Lexar Flash Lightening is fast, U3-free, and still going strong after more than a month. Clearly Lexar isn't using SanDisk technology.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Svartalf]

As others have pointed out, they may have licensing deals. It is also worth noting that each and every one of the omitted ones in that list is well big enough to have their own patents to annihilate SanDisk or has enough resources to invalidate the patent(s) in question, which would be a bad thing for them at this point.

I do know one thing, I'm going to be disinclined to deal with SanDisk at this point unless it's shown that
they really DID try doing the negotiations work and didn't just delay this action until they had everyone
using their stuff without realizing it like Rambus did with DDR memory.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[AaronW]

I just ordered a Lexar 8GB compact flash with UDMA which will do 45MB/sec (300x), so there are other players out there besides SanDisk. I saw one from a no-name that claimed 350x speeds, but Lexar has a good name and offers recovery software. They also offer some high-speed readers supporting firewire (which, IMO, is much faster and more reliable than USB [at least on Linux]).

Of course I also have a camera on order which also supports UDMA which can take advantage of this card.

I looked at Sandisk, and I did not see UDMA support in their high-speed compact flash cards.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Billly Gates]

I think they use their U3 technology that Sans disk promises will cure cancer and eliminate poverty. They want more flash apps so they can sell more drives.

Personally I dislike U3 almost as much as real player and yahoo messenger 8.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[russotto]

It is also worth noting that each and every one of the omitted ones in that list is well big enough to have their own patents to annihilate SanDisk or has enough resources to invalidate the patent(s) in question, which would be a bad thing for them at this point.

So does LG Electronics. Some of the others likely do as well.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Chandon Seldon]

Our patent system is certainly flawed, but your argument is exactly what patents are for.

If the patent system is intended to exclude competitors, then even if it works as intended it still squelches any hope of a free market. We can either have free market capitalism or government granted monopolies, not both.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Actually, I do RTFA]

If you don't complain about an infringing product, you should lose your right to patent protection. With millions of patents on the books, it's impossible for anyone to verify that they aren't infringing on a patent.

By the same token, with millions of products in the world, it's impossible for anyone to verify (quickly) that someone is infringing on their patent. While I agree patent trolls are evil, the alternative seems impossible to be remotely fair about, which would mean more power for larger corporations.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Anonymous Coward]

SanDisk does not make chips, they make memory modules.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Karem Lore]

Your argument is patently absurd and is my argument as to why patents in any form whatsoever is BAD! Let's use the wheel as an example. Say patents had been around in their current form back when the wheel (or the cog, or a whole number of other things) was invented, do you think we would be where we are today with cars, trains, mechanical devices (including watches due to cogs) etc? No, we wouldn't because the patent would have been tied up for the last x number of years (what is it now, 75 years?) and no other usage of a wheel would have taken place...(or cog). No Windmills, no bread. No bread, no food. Hell, we would have starved ourself to death as a human race.

And that is physical. We are now entering a world of method patents. Method to extract value from patents. Method of outsourcing. Method of masturbating (BIG ka-ching here). Where does it all stop?

Without a SHADOW of a doubt, patents are holding up human development and innovation. It is the single most destructive force in the evolution of our technological presence. Until such idiocy is removed we will be stuck in 21st century technological rubbish for a long, long time...

You'll probably tell me that companies should not be expected to do research and development at huge cost so that they can be copied in 2 months time by some cheap chinese manufacturer. What happens if I, a layman in company terms, am developing xyz. Huge company Y comes along, and develops something similar and has the money to patent it (while I don't). Is my development worthless then? Not to me. I believe I should still be able to develop my idea and if company Y just happens to pip me at the post that is not fair and I should NOT be required to pay a license. If I USE their product to create mine then that is something else. If I can show that I have developed my own product that just happens to have been developed by company Y but I can show that I have actually designed my own version then that should be ok. Just because the end-result is the same shouldn't prevent me from making my own version in my own way, just like designing a wheel, it has to be round, but the thread can be different. Still a wheel, but I designed my own way.

Karem

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Anonymous Coward]

SanDisk infringe on patients with thoughs companys.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[yodleboy]

A list of companies NOT named might be interesting, too. Among them are: Apple Samsung Micron/Lexar Sony

Isn't MemoryStick (named in the summary) a proprietary Sony product?

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[xtracto]

Yea. I think I messed up my point. In a sense, I was talking about basic technology that everyone is already using. If it's something no one else has done, then of course. But in this case, theres alot of companies already out there. Some patents are frivolous and basic.

Well DUH! if everybody is using such new technology it is because it is good. There are some companies which licensed the invention to the patent holder, the ones that did not do that and just copied the technology are the ones that are being sued...

I do not see what is wrong with SanDisk suing all those, if they want to use their inventions, they should License the patent, otherwise they can wait until the patent expires...

If companies are not allowed to have some edge for their research, then there will be no innovation.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[falsified]

Good evening,

Patents expire.

Thanks.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[demachina]

"If you patent flash memory technology, you shouldn't have the right to stop all other companies from making similar products"

So you think a better system would be some company spend millions or billions of dollars developing a better way to do something, and then someone can spend a small amount of money reverse engineering and cloning it and then undersell the original developer because they spend next to nothing on R&D because they ripped it off. The Chinese are particularly adept at reverse engineering things and then killing the original developer by undercutting them on price using their own design.

Patents in hardware are a totally good and legitimate thing. If you don't have them R&D is going to crater because people wont be able to recoup their R&D investment.

Now patents on software techniques and business methods tend to be complete B.S. since they will quickly make it impossible to do just about everything. There might be a case for software patents on really complex and difficult algorithms that are non obvious and take a lot of time, money and brains to develop, but simple and obvious things like the 1 click Amazon patent are pretty crazy.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Kalriath]

Yes and no. Sony doesn't make the cards. In fact, I'm pretty sure they contract... wait for it... Sandisk.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Paul_Hindt]

SanDisk lawyers, broadswords in hand, march valiantly to battle to defend their precious EEPROMS. The evil ninja lawyer forces of LG and Kingston lurk in the shadows to prey upon the unwary EEPROMS and pillage their secretz for fortune and glory!

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[FRiC]

This depends on which groups of people you're involved with. People in the computing industry often look down on Sandisk and their products, but photographers will almost only use Sandisk Ultra and Extreme cards. There are far more problems with Lexar than Sandisk when used with cameras, especially DSLR's.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[MBraynard]

Gosh you certainly baited the idiots.

To answer your question, Sandisk owns the firm that created nonvolitile Solid State Memory. They took it from zero to hero.

Please ignore the haters replying who have never and will never create anything worth patenting.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[slaingod]

No one is saying you can't have patents. The point is patents shouldn't give you exclusive rights to be the only one to make something with those patents. You are *supposed* to license your patents at reasonable rates, not try to litigate people out of the market. Business method and software patents are the obvious exception here, as they should never have been allowed to begin with. Now you may ask what 'reasonable' rates are. The benefit of patents is that if you make the product yourself, you don't have to license your own patents to yourself, which should give you an advantage over your competitors, other things being equal. SANdisk's problem is that they probably couldn't compete on price even if they did license their patents at reasonable rates, so they try to charge unreasonable rates and/or force competitors out of business. IMO anyway

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[CastrTroy]

But we'd certainly have less cases where they waited 5 years, until the technology was being used by 25 different companies, and then suing everyone. If you have so many patents that you can't keep track of them, and can't tell if a product is infringing, then you have too many patents. You don't have to watch the millions of products to ensure that your patent isn't being infringed, because only a very small fraction of those would have any possibility of infringing. If you have a patent on a component in a car's engine, you only have to pay attention to new car engines coming out, not to the millions of other products.

Re:Note who is not being sued....

[Svartalf]

Didn't notice LG. Thing is, they're no different than the other big players- they're doing the same sorts of things. My guess then would be that they've got licensing deals and the ones in the suit didn't come to the table. Biggest problem is, LG will try to invalidate their patents. Why sue when you're holding a busted flush?

Details?

[Bent Mind]

The second link in the summery offers a bit more information than the first link. However, both are missing details. It sounds like SanDisk is suing anyone who uses or interfaces with flash memory. The quote in the article seemed strange to me:

Our goal is to resolve these matters by offering the defendants the opportunity to participate in our patent licensing program for card and system technology. Otherwise, we will aggressively pursue these actions, seeking a prompt judicial resolution awarding damages, obtaining injunctive relief and banning importation of infringing product. I thought they were suppose to attempt to collect license fees before they sued.

The Yahoo/PC Magazine article seems to be cut off at the end. It stops at "for infringement of five SanDisk patents, including:".

Re:Details?

[Anonymous Coward]

summery

1. Adjective: Of, or pertaining to summer. eg. It was a lovely summery evening in May.

2. Noun: A place in which numbers are added together. eg. The great adders of Accountancy rarely left their summery to interact with the rest of the world. It was a boring place, but only slightly less so that the subtractery which was obviated by the addition of negative numbers.

summary

1. Noun: A shorter version of a a text or description of events intended to express the ideas contained therein in less space. eg. The summary has almost as much details as the article -- none.

They waited ALL these years....

[davidsyes]

Seems to me they FSCK'd up...

Doesn't patent-enforcement and claims for damages, etc, require ongoing, active enforcement?

Seems to me they waited all these years, found out they need a MAJOR cash infusion, and they see all these companies as an income stream. Kinda like lying in wait (yeh, the "victims" are aware there MAY be a trap around the bend, but are hoping no one is lurking...), hoping a court will rule in their favor.

Looks like the "staggering(ly)" long list is a clue they are gold-digging.

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[InlawBiker]

They weren't going to sue, but their CEO was up late watching Nick at Night and saw an ad to call for a free no-risk consultation.

Really though, I think the patent law suits are just another piece of ammo that companies can use to squash competition. The risk of an ongoing legal battle, no matter how ridiculous, is enough to kill some companies.

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[TheNinjaroach]

Doesn't patent-enforcement and claims for damages, etc, require ongoing, active enforcement? No, the active enforcement requirement applies to trademarks, not to patents.

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[oddityfds]

"Doesn't patent-enforcement and claims for damages, etc, require ongoing, active enforcement?"

No it does not. This is sadly a very common misconception. You're thinking about trademark law. Patents and copyrights are valid until they expire or are explicitly invalidated in court or similar.

And yes, this is one of the many problems with patent law.

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[davidsyes]

I sit corrected.

Still, though, it should be a mitigating factor when the DO end up in the courtrooms. Despite case precedents.

Thanks for enlightening me, though.

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[Svartalf]

No, active enforcement applies to ALL things in the Intellectual Property space; it's just that Trademark requires it or you lose it completely. In the case of Patents, if you delay, the BEST you can hope for is someone to stop using your invention- you will definitely not get damages if you wait this long and you may also get told you don't get the parties in question to stop using it for the devices designed up to that point that are infringing.

I expect a lot of Laches defenses being erected as well as responses using the lates Supreme Court of the US ruling about obviousness on a patent (which I suspect that SanDisk is going to get tripped up on...).

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[UnknowingFool]

It's called mitigation. If you believe someone has infringed on your patent, you are required to inform within a reasonable amount of time of discovering this or you lose your right to enforce the patent. Sometimes there could be a misunderstanding between the two parties and they settle their differences without a court. This was done to make sure things are fair for both sides as the alleged patent infringer may not have known about the patent or the technology does not use the disputed patent at all. Also, it prevents the patent holder from waiting for years until another company has made vast quantities of money to ambush someone else.

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[DustyShadow]

Actually it's called the doctrine of laches and you made a good point that the first guy didn't. The patent owner has to have been aware of the infringement for a certain amount of time before laches kicks in. It is possible that SanDisk just recently came aware of the infringement. There are very little details here but seeing as how there are some big name defendants in this case, SanDisk is going to have a hard time trying to prove that they were not aware of the defendants' products.

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't patent-enforcement and claims for damages, etc, require ongoing, active enforcement?

No. Trademarks are a different story, however.

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[tepples]

Patents and copyrights are valid until they expire or are explicitly invalidated in court or similar. But against a given defendant, certain awards of damages or injunctions can still be estopped by laches.

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[Anonymous Coward]

You may be confusing patent law with trademark law. With trademarks, if they fall out of use or are not defended, you lose the trademark. With patents, regardless of whether you sue anyone, you still own the patent.

However, there is a notion in patent law that deals with "lying in wait" (your term). It's called "laches" (that's the correct spelling), and it generally means that you can be barred from enforcing your patent against a party if you knew that they were infringing and did nothing about it so you could rack up the royalties due before going after them. The rules are more complicated than that, of course (it may not entirely bar enforcement, it just may keep you from seeking past royalties, etc.).

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[CAIMLAS]

Basically, you're right, I think.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I think of Sandisk, I don't think of "that market-leading company that makes flash drives and CF cards" I think of them as "that company which makes trendy products at inflated prices with a lower cost/benefit than the competition, and often a lower quality".

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[Chaos Incarnate]

Knowing of the product is a far cry from knowing that infringes. The latter, they'd likely have to acquire, disassemble, and study the product before they could know that it infringes (depending on just what the patent in question was, of course).

Re:They waited ALL these years....

[davidsyes]

Something the "first guy" (xin loi toi, toi ten my den...), hehehe forgot is:

Laches is an appropriate and convenient name. IF a company KNOWS it is being infringed upon, and delays inappropriately, and then tries to sue in court, it should suffer LASHES, as in LASHING!

Yeah, that'll help

[kent_eh]

Remember yesterday's story about tech you can't buy in the USA?

Let me refresh your memory

Hardware patents

[Isaac-Lew]

Have any of the the patent-bashers on here stopped to think that maybe *some* patents are valid (especially hardware)? After all, this is a company making actual physical products, not a patent troll or someone patenting software or a business product.

Re:Hardware patents

[Isaac-Lew]

s/product/process

Re:Hardware patents

[betterunixthanunix]

Well, what happens with algorithms implemented in hardware? Do I get a chance to patent the algorithm? If someone simulates the digital logic in software, are they in violation of the patent?

Suppose I patent a new type of op amp. If someone accidentally creates that arrangement of transistors as part of a larger circuit, are they in violation of my patent? The problem with patents is that you do not have to knowingly infringe them to be subject to a lawsuit. Patents should be reformed to be more akin to copyrights; that is, you should be forced to demonstrate that the infringement was knowingly committed, rather than just being accidental or developed by an equally intelligent competitor. If it is too difficult to show this, then the "invention" isn't novel or important enough to require any protection -- that is, it is simply too obvious.

Re:Hardware patents

[Gr8Apes]

Well, being as how there's absolutely no statement as to what patents are allegedly infringed upon, but guessing that given the players that it involves flash memory and by the number, rather old flash memory technology, quite a few questions come up, including whether they haven't passed up their opportunity to sue: 7 years max I believe for tolerated known infringement. Given that there's at least 24 defendents, indicating wide-spread and long running infringement, they probably can't pull the rug at this late date, although the courts have been known to do dumber things.

Re:Hardware patents

[Hatta]

Explain to me how Sandisk winning this suit will in any way advance the state of the art, or make more options available for consumers? It won't. The only possible effects this could have are negative, and therefore this move is bad news for everyone but Sandisk. Whether the patent is valid or not is irrelevant.

Re:Hardware patents

[Ravensfire]

Without patents, companies have less incentive to spend money on research, when they can simply take the research that someone else did. It's a powerful incentive to know that if you develop a new technology that you'll be able to recoup those costs without getting undercut.

Companies, however, will try to take patented ideas/products and get around that protection, because it's cheaper to get to market, undercut the developer and then handle the lawsuits. They might be in discussions with the technology developer for years, stalling them and stalling them while they're outselling the original because their price is lower since they don't have to recoup the development costs.

In the abstract, that's why patents are useful, and why they do help to "advance the state of art" and "make more options available for consumers".

-- Ravensfire

Re:Hardware patents

[rollingcalf]

"Well, what happens with algorithms implemented in hardware? Do I get a chance to patent the algorithm? If someone simulates the digital logic in software, are they in violation of the patent?"

Are you asking how it is or how it should be?

If you're talking about how things should be, I would say you should be able to patent the specific hardware that implements the algorithm, but not the algorithm itself. If somebody implements it with hardware substantially different from yours, or in software, they should not be considered as infringing.

Re:Hardware patents

[LordLucless]

The fact that twenty-or-so other companies seem to have independently come up with the process indicates that the process patented wasn't non-obvious.

Of course, I'm making an assumption here, and that is that these other companies didn't look up SanDisk's patent filing, and straight-out copy the process. If that's what happened, then SanDisk is entitled to their claims. But I rather doubt it.

Re:Hardware patents

[DustyShadow]

The fact that twenty-or-so other companies seem to have independently come up with the process indicates that the process patented wasn't non-obvious.

Maybe they copied the invention after reading the patent or looking at SanDisk's products? It happens you know...

Re:Hardware patents

[LordLucless]

And if you read my second sentence, you'll see that I acknowledge that.

SanDisk bought m-Systems, now sues

[postbigbang]

Patent litigation is the last gasp of the shnook. Time to change the batter (CEO).

They couldn't make their MP3 players do very well, the flash drive market is in no-margin-land, and so how do you boost revenue. Hey, Ernie-- we got any patents from that Israeli company we bought a coupla years ago? There's gotta be some money in that stuff.......

They have patents of their own?

[IvyKing]

I suspect that Apple, Samsung, Micron and Sony have quite a few patents of their own that could be used against SanDisk if SanDisk sued them, and supect the companies they are suing don't have much of a patent portfolio.

Another possibility is that the companies not being sued have cross-licensing agreements in place with SanDisk.

Re:They have patents of their own?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another possibility is that the companies not being sued have cross-licensing agreements in place with SanDisk.

Not to nitpick, but any licensing agreement would suffice as a means of avoiding being sued. Those companies may have worked out some arrangement with SanDisk (payment or otherwise) to use their technology without cross-licensing any of their own patents.

Mod Parent Up!

[gbutler69]

Yes, please explaing why Sandisk shouldn't be enforcing their patent?

The new powerhouse strikes back

[starglider29a]

Maybe Sansa has so much market momentum from its "iPod Killer" that it can now throw its weight around.

Oh, wait...

Trolls

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't object to hardware patents with anything like the distaste I have for software patents. That said, if I were a defendant, I'd simply refuse to import into the US.

Surely the world market has grown to its current size partly because these guys didn't enforce their patents? That's the definition of a patent troll.

What Goes Around Comes Around

[segedunum]

I'm not defending SanDisk, but given that they were dubiously halted from showing a bunch of MP3 players in Germany not too long ago, it's probably not unreasonable for them (and their lawyers) to think "Well, maybe it could work for us as well!":

"Our goal is to resolve these matters by offering the defendants the opportunity to participate in our patent licensing program for card and system technology," said E. Earle Thompson, chief intellectual property counsel at SanDisk, in a statement.

I also find it humorously ironic that if this works, it could result in the US missing out and not being able to get certain products, or at least needlessly paying more for them.

Re:What Goes Around Comes Around

[Diddlbiker]

Dubiously? As far as I remember they just didn't pay licensing fees to Fraunhofer Institute, the inventors of MP3, unlike the rest of the MP3 player industry. Can't blame them for thinking "if we can't get away with that stuff, why would others"

Re:What Goes Around Comes Around

[sjames]

"Our goal is to resolve these matters by offering the defendants the opportunity to participate in our patent licensing program for card and system technology," said E. Earle Thompson, chief intellectual property counsel at SanDisk, in a statement.

That's a little unclear what he's saying. I'll translate:

Dis is a really nice store you've got. It'd be a damn shame if somethin' were to happen to it....

They appear to be "offering the defendants the opportunity" blah blah blah in the same sense that a mugger "offers the opportunity" to participate in a wealth redistribution system.

Unfortunatly, none of the linked articles say what it is that SanDisk believes is so increadibly innovative that it deserves a monopoly on flash devices for.

SanDisk + Microsoft money

[JeremyGNJ]

Microsoft and Sandisk are collaborating on a replacement for U3 technology...due out next year.

"Patent Protection" seems to be the cry of all companies working with Microsoft. I bet MS did some nudging on this one.

Ah yes, U3...

[Moryath]

Seriously now: a nonfunctional "password protect" bit that could be bypassed with near "hold the shift key" ease, a "program installer" that never worked for anything nontrivial, AND you had to find an arcane little page on their website just to get the uninstaller to make your "U3" device behave like a normal fucking memory stick.

Yeah, it was "interesting" in the same way that a colonoscopy is.

Oh well. It could be worse - their competitors (Sony) put rootkits into everything.

I'll second that: U3 is crap

[spun]

My employer bought us all ScamDisk flash drives with that POS on it. Tried to put a flyer on it and take it to Kinkos for printing and the crapware wouldn't load, so the regular partition wouldn't mount, the flyer was inaccessible and my time was wasted.

U3 Developers are retards.

All I have to say...

[Cctoide]

M-M-MULTI KILL!

Just uninstall U3

[Billly Gates]

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2006/09/11/disable-remove-and-uninstall-u3-launchpad/

Directions are listed above and I can't stand U3. I agree with Sans disk that is retarded to have programs on Windows dependent on the registry which means you can't run the same apps anywhere but U3 is a bad way to fix this.

Infact U3 is a security bug as you can't just delete it and it installs itself automatically as a driver. U3 installs itself with autoplay automatically and even after delete the program off the drive. Its like the movie click where Adam Sandler throws out the remote yet it keeps reappearing on his body.

Re:Just uninstall U3

[JensenDied]

Infact U3 is a security bug Related information:
USB Switchblade
USB_Switchblade - hak5 wiki

Re:Just uninstall U3

[spun]

Thanks! I knew there had to be a way to get rid of U3. Now I'll actually use that flash disk.

So should I wait...

[rickb928]

for the losers to drop their prices at the clearance sales that would follow a judgement against, or... buy some cheap flash drives now? Since Sandisk might be able to get a judgement to have inventory thrown in the fire.

Whatchathink?

Re:So should I wait...

[toddestan]

Given that the prices of flash drives have been plummetting and the availability of cheap, no-name drives from overseas companies that don't give a shit about patents, I wouldn't buy flash drives to stock up, only if you need one.

freaky lawers in management positions!

[forestbrooke]

Just when I thought sanDisk was a decent company with a nice lineup of products (have anyone seen their mp3 player line up recently? not bad..), some screwhead in the 'intellectual property' division had a brainwave! now, wrestle in mud! all of ya'! till everyone stinks!

Unfortunately not

[Sycraft-fu]

You are thinking of trademarks. They have a "use it or lose it" type of provision. More or less with a trademark, if someone infringes and you fail to take them to task over it, you can lose your trademark. That's not the case with patents, you get to keep them for the prescribed time and enforcement is not relevant.

Personally, I think we do need an enforcement clause. Something along the lines of "If a company takes no action against an infringing product for 12 months from a time when they should have been reasonably aware of its existence, they lose the right to future action." More or less, if you ignore a product for a year after it's widely available, you can't go after them for money, ever.

Alas it is not so, and thus we get stupid suits like this. Companies purposely sit on patents and wait until they are widely in use so that when they sue, the people they sue have to settle or lose tons of money. If they enforced right away they might get nothing as the company might just drop it and go another route.

no-margin land

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it's in no-margin land because other companies in the same market segment are creating too much competition for sandisk by using their tech without paying license fees (or not paying enough for SanDisk's). Look at the companies that weren't sued, it's entirely possible that SanDisk licensed their inventions to some companies to maximize profit (due to distribution, brand, and scale issues). It's also possible that SanDisk wanted more favorable terms with other companies (same market segment, small size, etc) because those companies were limiting its sales. Those companies most likely refused and/or gambled on a lawsuit.
Patent litigation is simply part of the negotiation game, and just because some companies lose lawsuits and some companies get patents that are lame, doesn't mean patents are useless...especially hardware ones.

Oh Great!

[BECoole]

The last Sandisk USB drive I bought was craptastic.

Lawsuits are almost *never* the first step

[mbessey]

In my rather limited experience, the first step is almost always a strongly-worded letter, since those are:
1. Cheap
2. Surprisingly effective, if someone didn't know they were doing something wrong

The lawsuit usually comes about after you send the threatening letter, and the recipient replies with a politely-worded message like "go pound sand"...

Patents should be eliminated

[mlwmohawk]

Patents were originally for the encouragement of scientific advancement and innovation for a fledgling nation. We are now in a position where the very mechanism we put in place to help us is harming us.

Patents no longer encourage innovation, they destroy it. Unless the U.S.A. wants to continue its disastrous economic slide, it had better do something pretty quickly. HUGE international companies with no economic loyalty or tax revenue to the U.S.A. are seeking to prevent american companies from doing business.

Maybe patents have some value for the truly "non-trivial" things, but everything I've seen and heard the last few years is that mainly trivial landmine and submarine patents are getting approved because they are flooding the patent office.

The patent examiners are no longer guarding against bogus patents, the work load is too high, the pressure to allow patents is too high, and they are relying on the courts to do their job.

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[AHumbleOpinion]

Patents were originally for the encouragement of scientific advancement and innovation for a fledgling nation. We are now in a position where the very mechanism we put in place to help us is harming us.

Wrong. It helps any nation, not just a fledgling one. Patents increase the rate of technological advancement, eliminating patents would destroy the US economy faster than the current mess. The solution to junk patents and junk lawsuits is not eliminating patents.

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[mlwmohawk]

Patents increase the rate of technological advancement

This is provably false in the current international economic state, it is IP lawyer dogma.

The patent system was intended to be sort of a shopping gallery for people with ideas to link up with people with capital so that industry could be born.

These days, almost no business is started patent first, patents only come after the fact as "protection" from other patents.

The modern engineer and scientist almost *NEVER* looks at patents, therefor the supposed "obviousness" they are supposed convey is a fiction. They hinder innovation by allowing trivial and obvious techniques developed by matter of course by those skilled in the art to cancel truly innovative inventions.

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[DustyShadow]

These days, almost no business is started patent first

Wrong.

patents only come after the fact as "protection" from other patents.

What are you trying to say here? A patent does not "protect" you from another patent.


Almost any respectable economist will tell you that patents overall promote innovation. A lack of IP protection in third world countries is also a large reason those countries continue to stay third world.

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[AHumbleOpinion]

These days, almost no business is started patent first, patents only come after the fact as "protection" from other patents.

Proprietary technology is considered crucial to entrepreneurial efforts, virtually required by angel investors and venture capitalists. Without it a new venture is vulnerable to free riders who will replicate products or services without having to replicate or contribute to the original inventor's R&D.

Again, you confuse the abuse of the current patent system with patents in general and are advocating throwing out the baby with the bath water. Reform the system to eliminate junk patents and lawsuits, but do not eliminate patents in general. That is a return to the failed 3rd world where inventors, investors, and other risk takers are not rewarded. You complain about big companies and big government, but you advocate a system where they have all the advantages?

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[mlwmohawk]

What are you trying to say here? A patent does not "protect" you from another patent.

No I'm saying that is not what they are supposed to do.

Almost any respectable economist will tell you that patents overall promote innovation. A lack of IP protection in third world countries is also a large reason those countries continue to stay third world.

Nonsense, you don't think repressive governments have anything to do with it do you?

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[mlwmohawk]

Proprietary technology is considered crucial to entrepreneurial efforts, virtually required by angel investors and venture capitalists. Without it a new venture is vulnerable to free riders who will replicate products or services without having to replicate or contribute to the original inventor's R&D.

That is a common view of course, but do you think the "successful" companies started this way? Nope.

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[DustyShadow]

large reason != only reason.

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[AHumbleOpinion]

"Proprietary technology is considered crucial to entrepreneurial efforts, virtually required by angel investors and venture capitalists. Without it a new venture is vulnerable to free riders who will replicate products or services without having to replicate or contribute to the original inventor's R&D."

That is a common view of course, but do you think the "successful" companies started this way? Nope.

Sorry, but you are wrong. Seriously, you really need to read up on this topic. Wherever you are getting your information is terribly one side, religious dogma like.

Microcomputer for use with video display
United States Patent 4136359
Apple Computer, Inc.
Wozniak, Stephen G.
04/11/1977

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[djfake]

So what does that have to do with this article? And WTF? Patents are what's wrong with America? You have to be kidding...

There's little doubt that patent trolling is a load of bullshit, but don't blame inventors for it. The business is driven by money-grubbers and lawyers with nothing better to do. The shame is that the government - which is supposed to act for the greater good - has been bought out by the money-grubbers and lawyers and allows it to happen.

But stand down, there's nothing illegitimate about an inventor wanting to collect royalties on something they invented.
c

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[CapedOpossum]

So if patents provide a shield against big companies, how come the patent you mentioned did not protect Woz and Apple from IBM (IIRC IBM-PC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM-PC came out 1981, only 4 years after said patent was granted). Or were patent lifetimes that much shorter then?

Re:Patents should be eliminated

[AHumbleOpinion]

So if patents provide a shield against big companies, how come the patent you mentioned did not protect Woz and Apple from IBM (IIRC IBM-PC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM-PC came out 1981, only 4 years after said patent was granted). Or were patent lifetimes that much shorter then?

This particular patent covered a very low cost video implementation. The IBM PC used a different and more expensive implementation. The Apple II retailed for around $1200 and the IBM PC for around $3000, obviously video implementation is only one factor. The PC was not really a direct competitor at that time, that comes later in history. Apple did use patents against some early Apple II cloners and protected the US market, maybe Europe too but I'm not sure. Without patents Apple II clones would have appeared at a far earlier point in history, deprived Apple of a lot of revenue, without that revenue the Mac may never have happened, ... Those early years of a new company are so fragile.

Invention is not necessarily a new product

[AHumbleOpinion]

You seem to be arguing that because flash memory is common there is nothing to patent. That is not true. New ideas may have been required to get modern higher density chips to work in the first place, or the new ideas may have been necessary to be able to manufacture modern high density chip. Even if the chips have no new inventions, the manufacturing process may.

Free Market / Monopolies

[AHumbleOpinion]

If the patent system is intended to exclude competitors, then even if it works as intended it still squelches any hope of a free market. We can either have free market capitalism or government granted monopolies, not both.

No, you can also have a hybrid that is more efficient than either extreme. One that promotes inventions by granting temporary monopolies. This give the little guy a chance. In either extreme the little guy has no chance, he either gets crushed by big corporations or big government.

Re:Free Market / Monopolies

[Chandon Seldon]

No, you can also have a hybrid that is more efficient than either extreme. One that promotes inventions by granting temporary monopolies. This give the little guy a chance. In either extreme the little guy has no chance, he either gets crushed by big corporations or big government.

Do you have any evidence that this happens in practice? (And by evidence, I mean a link to some sort of economic article.)

Everything that I've seen indicates that patents are only useful for larger players to keep smaller players out of the market, and occasionally for patent trolls that don't produce anything to extract a moderate payout from some unlucky large company.

Re:Free Market / Monopolies

[AHumbleOpinion]

"No, you can also have a hybrid that is more efficient than either extreme. One that promotes inventions by granting temporary monopolies. This give the little guy a chance. In either extreme the little guy has no chance, he either gets crushed by big corporations or big government."

Do you have any evidence that this happens in practice? (And by evidence, I mean a link to some sort of economic article.)

Haven't you taken Econ 101? "First Movers" have an advantage when they have proprietary technology. Otherwise an imitator can be a "free rider" and reap the benefits of the inventor's R&D at no cost. Especially in a market like SanDisk's where there is virtually no "switching cost". With respect to startups and small companies, that temporary monopoly from the patent is their only negotiating point when dealing with mega corporations. As for additional evidence, angel investors and venture capitalists virutally require some sort of proprietary technology before investing in a startup or an existing small company looking to grow, some sort of "barrier to entry" is required.

Look up the quoted phrases in an econ textbook, or if you prefer wikipedia. Also read virtually anything on new venture creation and entrepreneurship. Your belief that only big companies benefit from patents demonstrates a gaping hole in your knowledge.

Re:Free Market / Monopolies

[smartr]

Should one really even care about little versus big? Do the courts have any rational way of determining what is "innovative" when the industry norm is exponential advancement in the form of Moore's Law? This can get even messier when products are operating off of thousands of patents. Would it not be reasonable to say that each day, those in the tech industry are coming up with tens of thousands of new patentable ideas (in terms of the law accepting them as patentable)? Would it not be reasonable to say that the next day thousands of ideas built upon those patentable ideas are being built on top of those ideas? Somewhere in those thousands of ideas, some companies decide to fork up some $5,000 or so in hopes of defending their ideas, while really just putting invisible hurdles in front of people who were never even aware of the innovation in the first place. I'll admit that some high quality ideas will be ruthlessly taken without a patent system; but without an effective way of determining what ideas break out of the routine activities of tech workers, I think the system looks more like a $5000 gamble to set profitable mine fields for large companies, and several $5000 bets by large companies to crush small competitors with government granted monopolies.

Re:Free Market / Monopolies

[Chandon Seldon]

Haven't you taken Econ 101? "First Movers" have an advantage when they have proprietary technology.

Yea, I have, and the professor was very careful not to say that government granted patent monopolies have any practical benefits.

I'm entirely aware of the argument that you seem to believe: that inventors need patents to prevent their competitors from leeching their R&D. But I haven't seen any evidence that patents have that effect to a meaningful extent in the real world.

Vague references to places where that argument is stated doesn't count as evidence supporting it. If you can't find any studies that actually show that effect, then just find me one case where a major corporation with a significant patent portfolio stopped producing a product or payed out significant patent license fees to a significantly smaller competitor who sued them for patent infringement. My guess is that it hasn't happened in living memory - in practice, I'm pretty sure the smaller company agrees to pay the larger company for a patent cross-licensing agreement to avoid the counter-suits.

Re:Free Market / Monopolies

[Hoi Polloi]

The fact that there are thousands of small companies that depend on a single unique product they is protected under patent is your evidence. Check out all of the small single drug firms or small tech firms (IRobot) out there.

Your argument to eliminate patents creates an environment hostile to innovation whereby any small fry trying to get started immediately gets undercut by a bigger business that can copy the product and get it to market first. The incentive to innovate is squashed as small businesses can just be overpowered so they don't bother trying and big businesses don't bother since they can still make money off the old technology (Windows).

Re:Free Market / Monopolies

[Chandon Seldon]

The fact that there are thousands of small companies that depend on a single unique product they is protected under patent is your evidence.

That would only count as evidence if you could demonstrate that their patents are actually preventing anyone from competing with them. It seems more likely to me that these companies have simply found a small niche that no larger player cares to fight them for.

Your argument to eliminate patents creates an environment hostile to innovation whereby any small fry trying to get started immediately gets undercut by a bigger business that can copy the product and get it to market first.

That's the standard argument for patents. Like I keep saying, I've seen no evidence that enabling small inventors is a significant effect of patents in practice. Lots of things might have some effect - but something as drastic as patents is only defensible if it actually does have some benefit.

'State of the art' already advanced

[AHumbleOpinion]

Explain to me how Sandisk winning this suit will in any way advance the state of the art, or make more options available for consumers? It won't. The only possible effects this could have are negative, and therefore this move is bad news for everyone but Sandisk. Whether the patent is valid or not is irrelevant.

The state of the art has already been advanced, consumers have already benefited, by the offering of temporary monopolies to inventors. SanDisk and others would not have invented these great memory devices in the first place if their R&D wouldn't have had patent protections. Without patents, the rate of technological advancement would be slow. We would be at the mercy of mega corporations, far fewer new companies would be formed or succeed.

Small/New companies need patents

[AHumbleOpinion]

"Patent Protection" seems to be the cry of all companies working with Microsoft.

It is also the cry of small/new companies that hope to compete against Microsoft and other mega corporations. Without patents, the little guys have virtually no chance.

I read that as

[tepples]

SanDisk currently has approximately 780 issued U.S. patents, and more than 400 foreign patents, and is the only company, worldwide, that has the rights to both manufacture and sell every major flash card format

I read that as "SanDisk is the only company that makes ALL of these formats", not "SanDisk is the only company with the legal right to make EVEN ONE of these formats". Specifically, RS-MMC and xD-Picture Card aren't very popular, having been largely replaced by SD family formats, so other companies might not have bothered to take out a license on them.

Laches

[tepples]

Not as far as I know. Only trademarks need timely enforcement. James Kilton is right: patent infringement claims can also be estopped by laches. It just kicks in more easily for trademarks than for patents, copyrights, or any other property claim.

Too much "harmonization"

[tepples]

No, you can also have a hybrid that is more efficient than either extreme. One that promotes inventions by granting temporary monopolies. But how long should such a monopoly last? One problem is that lawmakers are headed toward "harmonization" of statutes across industries rather than looking for what term of exclusive rights is best for each industry. That's part of why computer programs are copyrighted until 70 years after the last author dies: because somebody thought that copyright term was optimal for a literary work of fiction. The industries operate on very different timescales, yet lawmakers want to race to the bottom by "harmonizing" terms.

Because it's in your economic best interest

[Anonymous Coward]

Supporting SanDisks' competitors is in YOUR best interest. Unless you are delighted with needlessly shelling out extra money of course.

If SanDisk is successful, they can either lock out their competitors completely, or raise the prices on what everyone pays for Compact Flash. Either way, it's not in anyone's interest except SanDisk.

In short, they are attempting to establish a monopoly. In case you hadn't notices, monopolies are bad for everyone but the monopolist. They don't help society advance, and they suck capital out of everyone.

So yes, I'm going to be promoting SanDisks' competitors.

And I DO happen to make these buying decisions. This idiocy of theirs will indeed cost them money.

my experiences were good...

[Timothy Chu]

I have three Sandisk mem cards (CF and SD). Two of them failed (separate occasions) after about 3 years of near-constant use. While this may say something about the reliability of their products, Sandisk was very good about honoring a replacement card...i just had to mail mine back in.

Time to boycott another company

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to love SanDisk products. Until I saw this article a few minutes ago, that is. Now I wish I didn't own any of their stuff, and I just might replace it with products built by the companies they're trying to sue.

Any company that waits this long (intentionally) before filing suit so they can claim more in damages is evil, and despicable. You don't own the idea of a portable flash drive, guys. Grow the hell up.

Time to invest in SanDisk

[CitznFish]

Earnings? who cares. The money from the lawsuit will make the company golden!

Yeah Yeah Boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

I had been buying Sandisk on the basis they were one of the early/original promoters of Cash. Now I'll buy other brands. To hell with Patentfags.

Fuck SanDisk

[Werrismys]

I've been a happy SanDisk fan as long as I've had a digital camera (since 2001).
I have never had a failure on a SanDisk device, and I've never noticed any slowness.

After this - fuck them.

Re:Fuck SanDisk

[mgblst]

So, you are not interested in more details? Just straight away, fuck em?

There are some legitimate reasons to go down this path, you realise? Not everything is as obvious as the Amazon one-click patent, or the guy who patented swinging on a tire.

Patent trolls unite

[Anonymous Coward]

I often wonder what the world would be like today if the PC industry and the Internet started out in the current IP frenzy climate we have now?

Would the world be better off today or would we still be using UUCP?

Nortel can bite me for messing up SRP in the iSCSI spec.

prove it

[m2943]

Some patents are valid. But my presumption is that all patents are invalid unless someone makes a convincing argument that they should be valid. So, can you make a convincing argument that these patents are non-obvious and don't have prior art?

Apple doesn't make any kind of memory module.

[ToasterMonkey]

You never played that "one of these things doesn't look like the others" game as a kid huh?

Also, the only thing that Sony seems to have in common with the others are their Memory Sticks.
All of five seconds of googling turns up this

And here's a press release.

The other two, Micron/Lexar and Samsung, good question.

Hooray

[tknn]

At this point, the only thing that will ever fix the patent system is going to be fixed is if it gets even worse and corporations decide that it isn't worth it... So I say let the lawsuits fly!

had no problem deleting U3

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought U3 was not too bad, played around a bit with it and it seemed to worked smoothly - updated the Virus scanner, copied a few settings over etc. What annoyed me was that when looking for U3 software you were referred to the U3 website where most software needs to be purchased ("free trial").

Then I did what I bought the stick for (4 GB like yours) - install a thumbdrive bootable Ubuntu according to these instructions. Instead of fdisk I used gparted, but the procedure should be the same. Originally it showed a few MBs of unpartitioned space at the end (under windows too). Once I deleted the main partition (some weird CD-based filesystem, hence read-only) it was usable like any blank USB stick, so I had no problems repartitioning, setting the boot partition and installing Ubuntu.

I hadn't tried deleting that main partition under windows, but I don't see why it wouldn't work. Don't know about the disk partitioning tools for the Mac, but there should be something doing this as well.

blows the ipod nano away

[nurb432]

In price only, the quality and usability of the nano is still higher.

Today, their products are cheaper due to competition, ( even if its not all legal competition ). If they remove all competition from the market, expect their prices to rise significantly.

Use your imagination?

[Anonymous Coward]

Though I have no knowledge of the actual patents, it is extremely likely that they include IP that was acquired from M-Systems. M-Systems had some early and thoughtful patents in the flash space. I think they were considered the leader in NAND IP at the time that I researched NAND based flash alternatives (~2004) for a product that I worked on. There was concern at the time about not using new products that were/would eventually infringe when were as reliable as the M-Systems parts. It seemed at the time that most flash devices were likely infringing on M-Systems IP, including SanDisk, so it wasn't exactly a shock to hear that SanDisk bought them.

A quick search gives some of the flash related patents owned by SanDisk (and/or M-Systems):

Flash memory management method that is resistant to data corruption by power loss
Method of achieving wear leveling in flash memory using relative grades
Two-phase programming of a flash memory
Flash memory management method that is resistant to data corruption by power loss
Detecting partially erased units in flash devices
Partial block data programming and reading operations in a non-volatile memory
Flash management system for large page size
Wear leveling of static areas in flash memory
Method for improving performance of a flash-based storage system using specialized flash controllers
Method for using RAM buffers with simultaneous accesses in flash based storage systems
Flash management system using only sequential write
Flash file system optimized for page-mode flash technologies
Standardized flash controller

*Sigh*

[aelbric]

And that would mark my last SanDisk purchase. Shame too. I really liked their compact MP3 players.

I'll try to make up for it

[oyenstikker]

In Soviet Russia, high UID users correct low UID users.

this is why..

[vuffi_raa]

there needs to be a change in the patent system that disallows patents for "standard technology"- the same way that pharmaceuticals have a period where they are exclusive and THEN generics have free reign for production, the same should be done with technology adoption- after a period of time a piece of technology can be declared "standard" and be allowed to be incorporated in devices free of patent licensing. it would expand both use of many proprietary systems for consumers AND give a kick in the ass to R&D for a lot of trolling corporations