Seagate Sues STEC For Patent Infringement

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:The USPTO is broken. full. stop.

[stoev]

There is nothing, nothing, nothing innovative in SSD. The innovation may exist in Flash memory manufacturers and even this is very much in doubt. The situation currently is that huge companies like Samsung, Intel, Toshiba,... make enormous investments for new flash factories. They will be the beneficiaries of SSD, not some small innovative company. Seagate may be a monster in HDD business, but it is nothing compared to Samsung in more general terms.
So I wish Seagate good luck in defending their business. Because the next company they will have to target will be Samsung and this will not be a walk in the park.

Re:Clearly, protecting the innovator

[geekoid]

Don't be stupid.
Patent are there to help the patent holder, regardless of size. They make it easier for the little guy to get into or start a market.

If Seagate has a patent, then they should gt compensation.

This is the patent system working fine.

Yes, it needs changes, but it also does what it is supposed to pretty well.

This is why 'patent reform' make me nervous. What are the odds that if it is reformed it will be better? very low, in fact I think if momentum begins going in that directions, large corporation will push to make it like copyright law.

Very specific areas need to change, or be removed.

Re:The USPTO is broken. full. stop.

[zappepcs]

If you walk into the courtroom with a working demo of the product you are developing for the patent, ok, you win. If you have nothing to show for your patent other than paperwork from the patent office... sorry.

Yes, if you do not act fast, you can lose the patent to the public domain. Of course, if you truly have something that is innovative and non-obvious it will not readily be 'also invented' by someone else.

The patent system was created to deal with commerce and innovation of 500+ years ago. Do I need tell you about the contrast between then and now?

Technology based patents are useless in about 5 years; nearly worthless in 3. Anything longer than 7 years is gratuitous. Yes, I believe that there should be levels of patents issued. If your technology is truly innovative and paradigm shifting, ok, 21 years. It's not so if all you did was change the color (colour) or connector.

There no longer is a one size fits all schema. If you want a business process patent, I'm okay with that, but you only get 2 years from date of issue, after that it goes to public domain.

Oh, genetic patents... nach! not getting them. If you think your soybean seeds are better than nature has created, prove it by selling more without a patent. Absolutely no patents on anything that nature created: all you are doing is changing the color or connector. period. no. joking.

And to answer your point, if you are working on something and can show valid reason to have the patent longer, so it will be. If you have nothing, that is EXACTLY what you are leaving the courtroom with.