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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.'"
They've been fast, reliable, and not terribly expensive...
Shame I'm not buying another SanDisk after this.
"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."
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
"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?"
Palm trees and 8
They probably either buy chips from SanDisk, or they have a license deal with SanDisk.
Palm trees and 8
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.
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.
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
Does anyone know the basis for these suits? They've sued everyone, but the details are very sketchy.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
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.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
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.
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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.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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.
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.
You will notice that Apple, MS, Creative, etc. are not on the list. They compete against Sandisk but somehow found out how to legally.
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.