Seagate Sues STEC For Patent Infringement 51
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."
Re:Aw crap! (Score:5, Informative)
Seagate fears the market potential STEC has. The simplest path is to litigate STEC to death over patents or trademark.
It's happened to every small company I've worked for. Most of them closed up shop because the big fish buried them in Trademark and Patent litigation over and over again.
STEC's Official Response (Score:3, Informative)
STEC believes that Seagate's action is a desperate move to disrupt how aggressively customers are embracing STEC's Zeus-IOPS technology and changing the balance of power in enterprise storage.
QFT
Re:Seagate scared (Score:3, Informative)
Resorting to patent lawsuits is NOT a sign of a confident/competent tech company. There's a good chance this will cause a backlash if it fails, which in my opinion is what Seagate richly deserves. Litigation must not become a viable business strategy.