Looks like Seagate is starting up the lawsuits against flash memory-based Solid State Drives (SSDs, you know, the new wonderdrives going into a lot of small laptops, such as the MacBook Air or ThinkPad X300).
A few weeks ago, we ran a story Seagate’s CEO and some interesting comments he made in regards to flash-based Solid State Drives (SSD):
Realistically, I just don’t see the flash notebook sell,†Watkins says. “We just don’t see the proposition.â€
But in case flash prices continue to plummet and the flash drives really do catch on, Watkins has something else up his sleeve. He’s convinced, he confides, that SSD makers like Samsung and Intel are violating Seagate’s patents.
The New York Time’s is running a story on the lawsuit::
Seagate Technology, the largest maker of computer hard drives, made a pre-emptive strike against an emerging competitor on Monday when it filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing STEC Inc. of 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.
STEC had this response: