Tuesday 15th April 2008

Seagate sues SSD maker

Posted at: 11:16am 15th April 2008 by Ben Hardwidge

Hard drive manufacturer files a lawsuit against SSD maker STEC Inc for patent infringement

This month seems to be the time to sue your competitors over patents. Following on from Ultra’s decision to sue nearly all its competitors over a patent on modular PSUs, Seagate has now also filed a lawsuit against SSD specialist STEC over infringement of Seagate’s patents.

Is this a sign that Seagate’s scared of being left behind when the SSD business gets going? Seagate’s outspoken CEO, Bill Watkins says not. In an open letter, Watkins claimed that the lawsuit was ‘not about stifling innovation or threats to our business from solid state technology.’ In fact, Watkins says that Seagate would ‘welcome advances in this,’ and said that the company has ‘teams of people focused on the development of Seagate solid state and related technologies.’

According to Watkins, the lawsuit is simply about protecting Seagate’s intellectual property. Watkins explained that ‘what this lawsuit is about is preserving for our shareholders the value we have created by building an industry-leading patent portfolio.’ He also defended Seagate’s decision, saying that ‘Seagate has not been a particularly litigious company, but we have an obligation to our company and our shareholders to protect what belongs to them.’

This could just be the beginning of a long series of lawsuits filed by Seagate if Watkins’ letter is anything to go by. ‘As we hold key patents on nearly every form of storage technology,’ said Watkins, ‘I expect pressures on our competitors will mount and we may see additional encroachment on our intellectual property.’ However, Watkins said that Seagate would prefer to avoid getting in more legal entanglements, and would instead prefer to get its competitors involved with ‘constructive commercial partnerships and licensing agreements’ in order to use Seagate’s patents.

We don’t know which patents Seagate believes that STEC has infringed, but the company had 6,237 patents when we last checked . According to Watkins, Seagate has invested $7 billion into research and development over the last ten years, and it’s clear that it doesn’t want any other companies benefiting from its research for free.

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you must be kidding

people should chill out should they... lets just have a little lesson in market forces shall we. If people take a lax view of patent law then the potential benefits of putting massive amounts of funding in to R&D (research and development) are swept away, why would any sane company put money in to R&D if their competitors can just use what they have developed for free without having to pay for the research. No incentive to put money in to R&D leads to no money being put in to R&D and slower progress on developing new technologies. This is ultimately bad for everyone. Patent and copyright law exist for a reason. If people want to use a technology they must either license it from those who actually put the money in to develop it, fund their own research, or contribute to a joint research project. We don't live in one big happy star trek universe where everyone works for fun and has no need for money.

Comment by NewParadigm at 7:16pm 19th April 2008

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you must be kidding

Comment by NewParadigm at 7:16pm 19th April 2008

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Why O why

Do Americans Start everything? //They start sueing everyone for things in life, and now each other over something a judge at a tribunal will know eff all about, never mind if a jury or even the lawyers!.... Now its hit the computer industry, microsoft and intel being sued by the EU, because the EU dont have any money (ok thats not that reason, but i think it is reallly) and now seagate, hiper, and even AMD at one point were gonna sue intel..... wen will this end? lmfao..... people need to chill out a bit on these extremes...

Comment by Lightning_Pete at 12:43am 16th April 2008

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This isn't why copyright was created. More abusive corporations taking everything to the letter of the law rather than using common sense and humility. Idiots.

Comment by RickA at 5:10pm 15th April 2008

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This isn't why copyright was created. More abusive corporations taking everything to the letter of the law rather than using common sense and humility. Idiots.

Comment by RickA at 5:10pm 15th April 2008

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Good luck Seagate?

Seagate have been hinting at this this kind of thing for a while. If the patent refers to interface technology for SSDs, from what Seagate SSD product were these technologies stolen from; Seagate don't plan to release an SSD until sometime this year. If the patent is a more general storage interface technology, where are the lawsuits against other HDD makers? Oh wait, don't Seagate have a market-leading share in that business? Have a go of this: www.storagesearch.com/seagate.html (sorry, no HTML)

Comment by evanjdooner at 4:52pm 15th April 2008

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Good luck Seagate is my opinion,

If Seagates competitors have used a aprticular innovation which is patented yet they have neither licenced or even admitted it then they are quite simply Industrial theives. No different to the type of scum inventors meet that steal their inventions. If however, seagate are talking about something which is their invention but which, (for the sake of US, the consumer) all companies have adopted for intergratability or to try to get a standard used by everyone to reduce costs etc then its a different matter. Without more inside info we would just be a load of fishermen's wives gossiping without a clue as to whether our opinion is based on truth. This sort of rumour can seriuosly damage the image of the manufacturers involved but what the hell , its fun right ? :D

Comment by hazed100 at 12:23pm 15th April 2008

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MMMMmmmm....

I dont think its in seagates nature to hate competition. I hope that if anything comes out of this it would be that STEC and Seagate team up to develop the worlds fastest SSD at a more realistic price than intel would charge for thiers.