Seagate Files Suit Against Rival

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I guess Seagate’s CEO wasn’t kidding last month when he said he’d sue if SSD got popular. Today, the company filed a lawsuit in federal court against STEC for patent infringement.

In the suit, Seagate contends that STEC’s solid-state drive products violate four Seagate patents covering how such drives interface with computers. STEC, based in Santa Ana, Calif., makes solid-state drives for corporations and other large enterprises, a market that Seagate executives have said the company plans to enter this year. The suit was filed in Federal District Court in the Northern District of California.
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I'm a little on the fence. More power to them and their patents.. but at least they didn't wait for STEC to become a huge cash cow before dropping a lawsuit on them. I hope this doesn't impede SSD's progress.
 
maybe intel could sue the crap out of seagate... I guess i'll be buying western digital from now on
 
I'm a little confused. Are they suing because STEC uses an interface that they have a patent on? or is it something with the coding? This must be some dam interface to cost 7 billion to develope and never use. Why doesn't STEC just use a different one? what's so special about this interface Seagate developed?

My humble opinion, a company shouldn't be able to develope a product, patent it, and then sit on it for years. It doesn't make sense business wise and it hinders development. I'm not sure how you could inforce that, maybe require a company to have a plan to release a product using said patent in the next year, before they are awarded the patent.
 
I look at it this way... He said "Hey, if you keep using our patents, we'll sue you. You've been warned." Can't really fault Seagate here.
 
daragon said:
I'm a little confused. Are they suing because STEC uses an interface that they have a patent on? or is it something with the coding? This must be some dam interface to cost 7 billion to develope and never use. Why doesn't STEC just use a different one? what's so special about this interface Seagate developed?

My humble opinion, a company shouldn't be able to develope a product, patent it, and then sit on it for years. It doesn't make sense business wise and it hinders development. I'm not sure how you could inforce that, maybe require a company to have a plan to release a product using said patent in the next year, before they are awarded the patent.
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Well, Seagate has stated that they planned on bringing out such products this year. They were just working on them.
 
GilmourD said:
I look at it this way... He said "Hey, if you keep using our patents, we'll sue you. You've been warned." Can't really fault Seagate here.
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Exactly. And Seagate had the grace to sue NOW, rather than in 3 years when the SSD is a miltibillion dollar industry.

Go Seagate, IMO. This is how a company SHOULD litigate over patents.
 
Not really a big fan of the concept of patents, as they are more often than not used to bully the little guy, not protect them as was originally intended. (Only the big guys have the resources to enforce patents.)

That said, at least they had the good sense to sue a few months after issuing a warning, instead of waiting until all the companies were nice and ripe with lots of money to be taken.
 
daragon said:
I'm a little confused. Are they suing because STEC uses an interface that they have a patent on? or is it something with the coding? This must be some dam interface to cost 7 billion to develope and never use. Why doesn't STEC just use a different one? what's so special about this interface Seagate developed?

My humble opinion, a company shouldn't be able to develope a product, patent it, and then sit on it for years. It doesn't make sense business wise and it hinders development. I'm not sure how you could inforce that, maybe require a company to have a plan to release a product using said patent in the next year, before they are awarded the patent.
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Seagate and Western Digital basically own all the patents for the way drives communicate with the rest of the computer. No matter who you buy a drive from, Seagate or WD basically got a cut of the money. Any company that doesn't want to pay would have to spend tons of money and years of development to create a communication process that doesn't violate a patent. In all reality that would probably mean not using PATA or SATA, but good luck with that.

mjz_5 said:
maybe intel could sue the crap out of seagate... I guess i'll be buying western digital from now on
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If you don't like that patent situation, then I wouldn't go with WD either. They are just as bad as Seagate in enforcing patents. You are probably not going to see a lawsuit between Intel or Apple and Seagate, they probably already have licensing agreements with Seagate and suing the would void that agreement.
 
I was hoping that Seagate would get the Blue Jeans Cable guy to write a cease and desist letter.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
I'm a little on the fence. More power to them and their patents.. but at least they didn't wait for STEC to become a huge cash cow before dropping a lawsuit on them. I hope this doesn't impede SSD's progress.
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This is how I feel exactly.

Good for them, get that cake.

Bad for us, they are more or less going to knock off a great alternative solution to the pc industry in the upcoming years, or at least what would've been a great alternative in upcoming years.
 
mjz_5 said:
maybe intel could sue the crap out of seagate... I guess i'll be buying western digital from now on
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Yea I can so see how a person can label seagate as the "evil bad guy" here :rolleyes: They had the decency to give out a warning, which is an extreme rarity, and then sue them. And its a legit claim.

Oh and you're making it seem like WD is sooooo much more better. Good luck with that logic chief.
 
DemonDiablo said:
This is how I feel exactly.

Good for them, get that cake.

Bad for us, they are more or less going to knock off a great alternative solution to the pc industry in the upcoming years, or at least what would've been a great alternative in upcoming years.
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Not so sure, in the article Watkins claims to have dumped $7 billion into the development of SSD technology:

Mr. Watkins said that Seagate had spent $7 billion over the last year in research and development of the technology at issue in its suit. At the center of the suit is how solid-state drive technology interacts with computers, for purposes like error correction.
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I was a little sour with Watkin's first threat of a lawsuit, but it might've been spun around enough by the media to make it seem he's trying to kill SSD. If Seagate does in fact develop SSD products, I'd consider them.
 
Looking at it like that its also quite possible that they'll simply sue them into paying some kind of "owed royalties" and then from now on pay some kind of a fee to continue to use their patent now. In which case the technology will still live on. And if Seagate gets into the game then there goes added competition to help drive prices down to competetive levels with hdd.

Only time will tell I guess
 
I'm actually siding with Seagate here. I have alot of respect for their products after using them at home and at work for the past 4 or 5 years. The CEO is pretty outspoken and honest about the business aswell (I still remember reading an interview with him where he acknowledged that his products facilitates the downloading of porn.)
 
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