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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.'"
Not just around Sweden. Same holds true in the US.
My Babylon
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."
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...
Insert self-referential sig here.
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
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.
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
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?
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.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
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.
Another possibility is that the companies not being sued have cross-licensing agreements in place with SanDisk.
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.
... 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.May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
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)
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...
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
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.