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Seagate May Sue if Solid State Disks Get Popular
tero writes "Even though Seagate has announced it will be offering SSD disks of its own in 2008, their CEO Bill Watkins seems to be sending out mixed signals in a recent Fortune interview 'He's convinced, he confides, that SSD makers like Samsung and Intel (INTC) are violating Seagate's patents. (An Intel spokeswoman says the company doesn't comment on speculation.) Seagate and Western Digital (WDC), two of the major hard drive makers, have patents that deal with many of the ways a storage device communicates with a computer, Watkins says. It stands to reason that sooner or later, Seagate will sue — particularly if it looks like SSDs could become a real threat.'"
To be fair, it seems like their plan is to sue to get a piece of it, via technology that they really did create. It wouldn't be very profitable just to stop progress.
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Yeah, personally I'd like to see some actual specific patents rather than a CEO full of hot air making baseless threats. I'm sure Seagate has patents on storage device communication, but this article offers no insight on how SSD makers could be infringing. This is like the crazy patent claims Microsoft made against Linux (what was that? 184 alleged patents? More?) Examples would be nice.
Anyhow, flash prices may be dropping, but I don't see SSDs gaining majority marketshare within the next 5 years. Developers get lazy, cameras get more mega pixels, more people need digital video. Spinning disks are still massively cheaper per GB than SSDs, and unless the price were to drop dramatically, hard disks will still have the edge to keep the throne. Laptops may see SSDs sooner due to power, but I'd imagine that one way to forestall the inevitable victory of SSD would be more intelligent caching and a larger onboard cache for hard drives.
Anyhow, Seagate is worrying about market dominance, and the Seagate CEO makes vague threats that the lawyers at Intel and Samsung probably laughed off. Not that newsworthy in my opinion. Specific patents or litigation would be very notable though.
When companies cannot innovate, they litigate. They work hard to slow down the market so that they can catch up.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
Arthur Clarke, in his last interview with IEEE Spectrum - "I'm often asked why I didn't try to patent the idea of communications satellites. My answer is always, 'A patent is really a license to be sued.' "
One of my complaints about patents as they currently are.
Either they are violating your patents (sue), or they're not (don't sue).
You dont get to sit there and wait and wait until they make gobs of money in case 1.
So seagate, are they violating your patent? If so, proof please, if not, you yield all rights in case they are found to at a later date
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You will probably never see a major corporation admit that patents are largely become just a form of rent-seeking than this.
We are gonna wait till it's popular, then sue. ----WTF is that, it's greed. Much like Gibson suing everyone and their mom's now that Guitar Hero is a big thing, if you have a right to something, bring it up as soon as it happens, not when you think you can maximize cash. Why is that practice even legal?
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Those are 2 companies that have VAST patent portfolios, I'm sure. Especially Intel.
I imagine that Seagate is violating some Intel and/or Samsung patents, in one obscure and stupid way or another. Seriously, Seagate doesn't have the juice to take on those 2 companies. Never mind that if Seagate really decides to start some shit with their hard-drive patents, I imagine that IBM will get involved, since they own most of the patents on the basic technology of hard drives. And we all know how IBM deals with people that sue them- they take no prisoners.
Where is Intel in all this? They make the south bridge and MCH chips that talk to SATA drives. Are only Seagate and WD drives allowed to connect to them? Is Intel beholden to patent holders on the SATA interface? Why not connect future drives through USB 2/3 if SATA is patent encumbered?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
- There are in fact no relevant patents
- There are but the devices do not infringe
- There are, Samsung changes the design, might have to pay back royalties but the effects will be limited as Seagate don't have SSD products in the marketplace
- There are, design can't be changed, they do a deal
- There are, design can't be changed, Samsung IP lawyers dig up some stuff Seagate is violating somewhere, they do a deal
- South Korean company buys Seagate
For Seagate, the issue is to a certain extent that they can't piss off their customers too much. Apple for instance use lots of HDDs but they also want to use SSDs and Seagate doesn't yet have a product - and when they do, where will they get the flash memory from? Oops...just pissed off both customers and suppliers.Mind you, I do like the Momentus drives.
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If Seagate pushes hard enough, they may find this out the hard way. They may be an 800lb gorilla in the storage market. But, even a large ape does not like getting stung by a thousand bees, and Seagate is waving a stick around a number of bee hives, in my view of things.
What if, faced with a potential lawsuit from Seagate, we were to see Intel, Samsung, TI, etc., get together and develop a new standard that bypasses Seagate's IP. They could license it to each other for next to nothing... except to Seagate... no soup for you. Sure, they'd like to be safe from a backlash in the spinning media world. But, given the rapid price drops on SSD storage, at some point the SSD media will be "cheap enough" for primary storage and spinning media would be relegated to 2nd tier, archival storage. Intel certainly has the smarts and the fabrication facilities to develop a competitor to anything Seagate might come up with.
Here's an honest question I've been wondering about for a while. Why don't we use GigE or 10GigE to communicate with storage? I imagine there's more overhead than with the currently used protocols, but how much are we talking about here? I'm more of a software than hardware guy, though I know a little about the different layers in the ISO model. *waves hands*. Build in a router on the motherboard, have a port for talking to the outside world and a few ports for talking to storage. Economy of scale and the hardware would be dirt cheap... right? Since it seems like an obvious idea, I'm sure I'm missing something. Would someone who knows these things care to elaborate? Tnx!
Patents used to be for specific implementations, not the ideas behind it wholesale as no one back then seriously thought you should have a monopoly or could even own an entire idea.
I was under the impression that with intellectual property, if you were aware of a violation you HAD to pursue its resolution immediately, or else risk foregoing legal protections. The point of which is to prevent just what's being suggested here--waiting for a technology to become widespread specifically in order to profit more from the eventual suit. Am I missing something here? Any IP lawyers want to chime in on how this could be legit?
If someone is violating your patent, you know it and don't do anything; you'll lose in court. Rambus lost big this way when RSDRAM was clobbered in the market by DDR SDRAM. Rambus knew DDR SDRAM was violating their patents before it made its way to market and did nothing hoping to use lawsuits at a later time if RSDRAM was losing. The courts slapped them around for bit for fun and then said DDR SDRAM was in the clear.
If someone is violating your patent you need to sue now. Suing later just makes your job much, much harder. Especailly with the CEO of your company saying things like were said in the article.
Patent abuse will be irrelevant in a few years when the U.S. economy finally collapses. All the lawsuits are only accelerating this process, siphoning money away from the manufacturers and producers that used to make the country tick.
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Unfortunately, that's not the address for serving a notice of suit and motion for judgment. They refused flat out to give it to me.
And if not giving you my address is all it took to keep you from suing me, then I wouldn't give you my address either.
This guy's the limit!
No, it doesn't work that way. The way you describe would seem more logical, but these *are* patents we're talking about.
Damages start to accrue when the infringer is "put on notice" by the patent-holder. This can be done one of several ways, if you are the patent-holder:
1. Send a notice by mail (registered of course) to the manufacturer citing the patent(s) you hold, and claiming that they are infringing. At this point you could offer to license your patent, tell them to cease production and stop selling the item, or demand a settlement offer (and still shut them down or license the patent).
2. Mark your own products with the granted patent numbers. Usually something like "This product is covered by US patents 5,205,321 and 5,255,555." Although some manufacturers just put a list of patent numbers only on the product. Sometimes you will see a product that says "Patent pending." This does nothing. It might scare folks out of infringing, but I could write that and have no patent at all. No damages would accrue, and that is not "putting them on notice."
3. If the manufacturer inadvertently discovers that they are infringing the patent, then the damages begin accruing then. (Of course, proving that they knew when they knew is another matter entirely).
But you could really screw a manufacturer over by telling them about this article and showing them the patents. Essentially you would be doing the work of "putting them on notice" for Seagate.
Many manufacturers have several strategies for this problem:
1. On release of the product, they do a "patent scrub." This allows the inventors to file patents protecting this product. During the patent scrub, they are asked about any prior art or other patents that would limit the claims for this product. Often, though, during the prior art search, a patent claiming the exact product is found. Now the manufacturer must make a decision to either a) stop manufacturing/using/selling, b) risk infringement (with treble damages), c) contact the inventor for possible licensing.
2. Purposely don't do a prior art search. This way you won't turn up any patents accidentally. Sometimes it might be a good idea to save several dollars per sale in an escrow account in case of patent infringement (to easily pay off the patent holder). Then hope there is no product out there that has been patent-marked. If the manufacturer is contacted and "put on notice" by a patent holder, then the manufacturer can stop production immediately without any damages.
Often, however, a manufacturer could go a complete product cycle while unknowingly infringing a patent -- and never get a notice. If they make it all the way through, and then the patent-holder comes later claiming infringement, it is too-bad-so-sad. The manufacturer isn't making or selling that product anymore.
That's all I know. IAAPP.
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I think you forget the EU Commission and EPO merrily pushing for USPTO-style patent-everything in Europe. I'm _in_ europe, so, while I don't much care if the U.S. economy collapses (well, it would suck, especially for you but also for us, but I mean in an immediate start-subsistence-farming sense), I don't think the collapse of the U.S. will end the madness for us.
I am dying for an SSD. It is silent, and rigid, and uses less power. And newer drives are guaranteed to be up to 4 times faster than the current "standard" SSD drives that Dell and Apple put in their laptops (200Mb/s versus 50Mb/s read). If you had the money, you would have no reason NOT to move to SSD, especially if you have a laptop, and more so if you use your computer for work. cameras get more mega pixels, more people need digital video On the contrary, reading huge files is where SSDs are fastest. Not everyone puts all their video on their pc, and if you do a terabyte drive might be what you need. However, if you wish to edit and process video and burn it onto DVDs then an SSD is exactly what you need to speed up crunch time multi-fold. An SSD for active files and an HDD for mass storage is the way it will be.
I agree that the low-end computer market will consist of HDDs for a long time to come. HDDs will not go away as long as they provide cost effectiveness. However, once the next generation drives are out and hit the 5USD/GB mark everyone with a buck will want one especially when their IT friends will be all over them.