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Seagate Sues STEC For Patent Infringement

Posted by kdawson on from the hey-at-least-it's-not-a-software-patent dept.

Lucas123 writes "Yesterday Seagate filed suit against STEC, claiming several of its products, including solid state disks and some DRAM devices, infringe as many as four of its patents. Today STEC responded that it holds patents on the technology 10 years older than Seagate's. A Seagate win in the suit, or a settlement, could result in the equivalent of a tax on SSDs and potentially other flash memory products, increasing prices to end users at a time when demand for SSD storage is exploding."

6 of 51 comments (clear)

  1. Aw crap! by blind+biker · · Score: 4, Interesting

    STEC makes some of the best (in terms of reqrite/erase endurance) Flash RAM modules for the money. As a new Eee PC user, I am about to buy one or two of their SD cards, as their models are actually unmatched WRT write endurance, by any SD manufacturer, as far as I could tell. Very few focus on this characteristic - all the others mostly only care about transfer speed and capacity. Why does the juggernaut Seagate have to go after this particular manufacturer?

    --
    "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
    1. Re:Aw crap! by JrOldPhart · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Seagate is the Monster Cable of the Disk Drive Industry. Try to do a startup of any form of mass storage and you will need to spend a large portion of your seed money on legal to hold Seagate at bay. Until they see that you are standing dead.

      --
      Nothing is foolproof, fools are too ingenious. - Murphy
  2. Seagate scared by crow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Wasn't it just a month or so ago when the CEO of Seagate said he wasn't worried about SSD impacting their market, but if it became a threat, they would use their patent portfolio to defend against the new competition? So doesn't this mark a very rapid change of outlook on Seagate's part? I guess SSDs are the next big thing--Seagate confirms it.

  3. The USPTO is broken. full. stop. by zappepcs · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is a perfect example of where the patent system is broken. It makes only logical common sense that the innovator here should be allowed to continue unfettered after paying a minimum penalty payment. By minimum, I mean $1 USD or something, and the patent holder forced to negotiate royalties via arbitration. If you have the patent and sit on it... tough, sucks to be you. If you wait more than 1 year after the common market sale of said product, you get nothing and the patent falls to public domain.

    If you are found to be stifling innovation by using patents to block innovators... well, say good bye to ALL your patents in the next 7 years. At least any patents that look similar to the one in question. Say, all your hard drive patents.

    Patents are meant to protect, not be used to bludgeon your competition into bankruptcy. If you misuse them... nach!, all your patents are belong to the public domain.

    It's time that this stupid use of patents was brought to an end.

    Sure, my suggestion has some issues, but every solution less than 100 pages long does. The idea is what I'm offering, not the fine details.

    --
    Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
  4. Re:Seagate scared DELAY EXPLAINED by Nom+du+Keyboard · · Score: 2, Interesting

    So doesn't this mark a very rapid change of outlook on Seagate's part?

    He just didn't know which possible patents he could throw against it at the time and didn't want to be questioned on that point. Now he believes he knows that answer.

    --
    "It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
  5. And So It Goes... by His+Shadow · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Can't compete? Litigate!

    --

    Fiat Homos et Pereat Theos