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

*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.

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....

[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."

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

[betterunixthanunix]

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

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: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: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.