SanDisk drops a patent lawsuit bomb, sues 25 companies for infringement
Apparently SanDisk just noticed that other companies have had the nerve to ship flash-memory devices, because it's just dropped two lawsuits and an International Trade Commission action against some 25 companies, including Disclaimer: Although this post was written by an attorney, it is not meant to be legal advice or analysis and should not be taken as such.
ITC case (five patents allegedly violated):
ACP-EP Memory
A-Data
Apacer
Behavior Computer (d/b/a Emprex)
Buffalo
Chipsbank
Corsair Memory
Dane-Elec
Edge
Imation/Memorex
Interactive Media (d/b/aKanguru)
Kaser
Kingston
LG Electronics
Phison Electronics
PNY
PQI
Silicon Motion
Skymedi
Transcend
TSR (d/b/a T.One)
USBest
Verbatim
Welldone Company
Zotek/Zodata (d/b/a Huke)
First patent lawsuit (same five patents as in the ITC action):
ACP-EP Memory
A-Data
Apacer
Behavior Computer (d/b/a Emprex)
Buffalo
Chipsbank
Corsair Memory
Dane-Elec
Edge
Imation/Memorex
Interactive Media (d/b/a Kanguru)
Kingston
LG Electronics
Phison Electronics
PNY
PQI
Silicon Motion
Skymedi
Transcend
TSR (d/b/a T.One)
USBest
Verbatim
Welldone Company
Zotek/Zodata (d/b/a Huke)
Second patent lawsuit (two unrelated patents):
A-Data
Apacer
Behavior Computer (d/b/a Emprex)
Buffalo
Dane-Elec
Kingston
Phison Electronics
PQI
PNY
Skymedi
Silicon Motion
Transcend
USBest
Verbatim
Zotek/Zodata (d/b/a Huke)
Filed under: Storage
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
CUBSWILLWIN @ Oct 24th 2007 8:41PM
25 companies!?!!?
Ignatius @ Oct 24th 2007 9:54PM
SanDisk:
GIVE US YOUR MONIES, WE NEED MORE LARGE VACATION HOMES.
Also, my caps lock key was stuck.
3rdsun @ Oct 24th 2007 8:52PM
"Although this post was written by an attorney, it is not meant to be legal advice or analysis and should not be taken as such."
Who is the attorney, am I missing something here. is engadget run by a blue collar sharks now. Just kiding Nital, your views are taking with a healthy dose of salt.
So it goes to say that flash drive are gonna skyrocket now and I was looking for prices to come down
birdUK @ Oct 24th 2007 8:58PM
Yet more stupid and ignorant americans sueing each other, glad i live in the UK.
paul34 @ Oct 24th 2007 9:02PM
Glad to see there are no ignorant people in the UK although you could really work on your spelling. Just saying in case some one starts "sueing" you ;-)
p-diddy @ Oct 24th 2007 10:16PM
More stupid americans...whose products you buy. What does the UK produce other than Warhammer miniatures?
-p-
I kid, I kid.
Iain @ Oct 24th 2007 10:32PM
Ooh, ooh, I know - we invented a considerable proportion of the major world-wide sports, thereby giving the rest of you enjoyable activities with which to while away your free time and routinely humiliate us with ;-)
paul34 @ Oct 24th 2007 9:00PM
Danget. And here I am still poking along with a 32 MB flash drive. =(
webon @ Oct 24th 2007 9:03PM
Rocket docket??? is that some kinda USian lingo?
what does it mean man?
p-diddy @ Oct 24th 2007 9:48PM
A court's case schedule is called a "docket." It is normal for a case to take two years or so to go to trial. Some courts however speed up the process by imposing strict limits on the time parties have to file briefs, opposing parties have to reply to those briefs, etc. Courts that have "quick" dockets are called "rocket dockets." They are typically favorable to plaintiffs, because they either force the hand of defendants into settling (trials invariably cost a _lot_ more than settling) or, if the plaintiff is seeking an injunction, gets the potential infringing party to cease infringing sooner.
Hope this helps.
-p-
alf @ Oct 24th 2007 11:17PM
Great explanation. The "rocket docket" can help the defendants too, though. Discovery can be a royal pain in the ass, and when you're on a rocket docket, the judges are much more lenient about what has to be produced.
If you're on a trial schedule that allows for a year or more of discovery, the court is not going to buy a defendant's argument that they don't have the time to find some documents. But when you have a case that goes from filing to discovery to *trial*, all within a year, when defendants bitch about digging up backup tapes lost in storage, the judge is more receptive.
p-diddy @ Oct 24th 2007 11:28PM
Yeah, discovery's a bitch, especially in E.D. Texas: "No document requests, just turn over all relevant documents." Yech.
Aren't the new Federal Rules a hoot though? There have been some nasty sanctions against attys lately for spoliation of data, intentional or otherwise.
-p-
bob @ Oct 24th 2007 9:11PM
wow some one suing everyone except apple for a change lol, and an mp3 player maker at that
robjennings @ Oct 24th 2007 9:18PM
The constant use of the word "drop" usually doesn't bother me, but it certainly has the potential to make things confusing. "... it's just dropped two lawsuits..." would almost always indicate, at least on other websites and in day-to-day conversation, that Sandisk has retracted two lawsuits.
Fernando @ Oct 24th 2007 10:03PM
Agreed. I read the post about four times before the meaning of 'dropped' finally dropped on me =]
Tom @ Oct 24th 2007 9:31PM
Damn, why is SanDisk being such a bitch.
Iain @ Oct 24th 2007 10:30PM
Perhaps because there are a lot of other companies have ripped off Sandisk's ideas without properly recompensing them and Sandisk are legally entitled to seek damages?
Just a thought...
John Doe @ Oct 25th 2007 2:18AM
And yet they have had years to go after then yet haven't. Hmm could it be, because they knew that if they dropped this bomb the day their competition started production that there would be a hell of a lot more options for them then to just bite the bullet and pay the licensing fees? Nope this is Sandisk being a greedy asshole, pure and simple.
No what really needs to happen is that the same thing that occurs with trademarks needs to be applied with patents. If you don't actively defend your trademark within a set period of time you will loose any right to it. The same principle should apply to patents. Maybe then some of this bullshit would stop or at least wouldn't happen YEARS after a company starts up a product line. This bullshit has to stop.
clevin @ Oct 24th 2007 9:38PM
Time to boycott sandisk, from today! Mr. Sandisk, goto HELL.
p-diddy @ Oct 24th 2007 9:52PM
Out of curiosity, why? Because they filed a lawsuit? I don't know anything about the suit other than the jurisdiction and venue, but why does filing a lawsuit == automatic boycott. If SanDisk invented the subject matter in dispute, it is their right to protect it. That's kind of the point of getting a patent.
-p-
sean.boots @ Oct 24th 2007 9:54PM
Touché. Somebody remind me again how the patent system makes the world a better place!
p-diddy @ Oct 24th 2007 10:03PM
Patents are beneficial because they are a public disclosure of the invention in exchange for a limited (temporal) monopoly on preventing others from making that invention. To clarify, a patent allows the owner to prevent others from making the invention; it does not confer a right on the patentee to make the invention himself. Patents are a "negative" right.
The idea is that the patentee is telling the world how to make the invention instead of somehow keeping it a secret. Some trade secrets are very valuable (e.g., the formula for Coke), but they are hard to protect and once publicly disclosed, they are unprotectable. Patents are often a easier to protect.
-p-
p-diddy @ Oct 24th 2007 10:06PM
...and therefore making it more likely the inventor will provide the tit-for-tat disclosure.
-p-
ark_v2 @ Oct 24th 2007 9:55PM
Oh, so SanDisk wants money for it's 32GB Sansa Views huh? :D
mentalsticks @ Oct 24th 2007 10:17PM
Nilay -
You're a great addition to the engadget team.
Nushio (NDF - Blue) @ Oct 24th 2007 10:18PM
Stop the presses! Patent lawsuit that didn't happen in Texas?!
p-diddy @ Oct 24th 2007 10:40PM
Seriously - plaintiffs are already shying away from E.D. Texas because of the Patent Reform Act of 2007 which is changing some of the venue rules, so I'd expect to see more of this. That said, Wisconsin and Delaware and pretty high volume jurisdictions for patent cases.
-p-
Devon Shaw @ Oct 25th 2007 3:53AM
Engadget needs to hire p-diddy next. That was an impressive trip through the comments.
p-diddy @ Oct 25th 2007 5:06AM
I'm gunnin' for it. ;-) If I knew engadget et al. were hiring lawyer types, I would have... well, probably nothing at the time - had to finish school first and my firm-during-the-day job keeps me pretty busy as is.
That said I _love_ talking/posting about and discussing IP. It is often a very misunderstood area of the law and people are generally receptive to the concepts if someone just sits down and explains the basics and the reasoning behind them.
I benefit by discussing it with non-lawyer-types as well because it thins the kool-aid I drink on a dialy basis - non-lawyers have a much more common sense approach to legal problems. It is very easy to get caught up in the academic idea of "what's right" and for me to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Just tryin' to help the community.
-p-
bsm0f0 @ Oct 25th 2007 8:39AM
+1 for -p-
It's nice to get an unbiased explanation how things work while educating the public. Thanks -p-!
strider_mt2k @ Oct 25th 2007 9:05AM
SNAP!
GTB @ Oct 24th 2007 10:50PM
Is Philips Electronics (Philips) included in the lawsuit ?
It was mentioned in the post but I could not find it back in the list of companies. Not sure if this is a mistake...
Xerxes @ Oct 25th 2007 8:01AM
The patent system makes the world a better place because it gives corporations and individuals an assurance that it is worth spending their time and money on research and development.
If there was no patent system anybody could legally copy anything invented by anybody else. Who would spend millions of dollars bringing fundamentally new technologies to market under those circumstances?
It is the abuse of the patent system that is absurd, not the system itself. The rules on what can be patented certainly need to be tightened up. Nobody should be able to patent a natuarally ocurring item, such as a DNA strand for example, and the ability to patent nebulous concepts should certainly be removed, but the patent system itself is one of the foundations on which innovation is built in a market economy.
p-diddy @ Oct 25th 2007 10:01AM
Well, the system is in the process of being tightened up. The Patent Office just enacted rules that limit the number of applications you can string together (called Continuations) and the Supreme Court just reset the standard for what is "obvious."
One of the issues with patent law is that there is a special appeals court that hears patent cases called the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ("CAFC") and usually it is the last word on patent law. Therefore, when it speaks, people listen, and there have been some decisions that, in hindsight, have steered patent law more in favor of the patentee.
About every 20 years or so, the Supreme Court hears a bunch of patent cases and adjusts what has been going on. For the last decade or so, the CAFC has been holding that for something to be obvious, there has to be some teaching, suggestion, or motivation to look at one thing and combine it with another to get the invention. This is kind of a difficult test to meet because there basically had to be a statement saying "it would be great if I could combine this with X" for an invention that combined to two to be obvious. Well, in a 2007 case called KSR v. Teleflex, the Supreme Court said, "not so - go back to the Deere standard" which is a much broader interpretation of obviousness bascially saying what a lot of people say: "well it would have been obvious to ME" where "me" is "one skilled in the art."
It's going to be a while for everyone to feel the effects of the new rules and KSR, but there should be either a significant reduction in the number of patents granted or a severe reduction in the scope of each patent, i.e., the claims should be much narrower.
Interesting times ahead.
-p-
Big India @ Oct 25th 2007 12:42PM
SanDisk is just defending its intellectual property, there is NOTHING wrong with that. Enough of the ignorant comments people . . .
John Commenter @ Oct 25th 2007 5:03PM
p.diddy, you're not bad. But as you admits, you're not experienced.
You do clearly tend to really, really drink the Koolaid. So, just to be clear: KSR is not necessarily right, beneficial, or useful to society or business or anyone else, the Supremes have no particular insight on technology and innovation policy, don't understand how things work, and usually screw up things worse than they help it (you're right on the 20 years), the Fed. Cir. is a remarkably activist appeals court filled with strange and irrational agendas that is even better at screwing things up than the Supremes. The disclosure for exclusivity bargain is an ideal - but not always a reality. Disclosures usually suck. Etc.
More to the point, there is no objective evidence that a patent system is any use at all. At the same time, there is no evidence it is useless. We just plain don't know whether it does more harm than good or more good than harm in theory; we don't know whether our particular implementation does more harm than good or more good than harm; and we don't know whether alternative incentivization (open source, public awards of cash, whatever) would be better or worse for promoting the advance of the arts and sciences. So there is no use pronouncing that patents are good or bad. You have no data - no-one does.
What patents are, however, is real, just like income tax, cancer, prostitution, and gambling. Get used to it. They are a real business and legal risk that competent business management is expected to handle offensively and defensively. They are a real basis for a business model based on, depending how you look at it, legal extortion or admirable protection of intangible private property.
The dumbest comment on here though, is the implication that someone who is going to take a business action (suing 25 companies for infringement) is somehow obligated to do it early. Why would they? Who does that serve? Lawsuits COST. Three patent suits against this many companies, seven patents, foreign defendants, goodbye $1M a month. You don't do it until there are no better alternatives. Just like it wasn't SanDisk's obligation to pursue them earlier than the risk-reward warranted, it wasn't their obligation to quit before the risk-reward warranted.
Let me just put this in before someone else does "I just got a patent on suing people for patent infringement. Yuk yuk yuk."
p-diddy @ Oct 25th 2007 9:42PM
I'm sort of confused how you can say KSR is not right. Not right in what sense? It's the law. There is no right or not - it just is. That's like saying Grokster decision's not right. Well, it doesn't really matter - you either fall on one side of the fence or the other, i.e., you intended and marketed your product to infringe copyrights, or you didn't. How you feel personally about it is irrelevant.
Back to your point, you are correct there is no evidence that a patent system objectively does or does not benefit society. But there is evidence that once a country starts respecting its own IP and the IP of other countries, it becomes increasingly "developed" and generally involved in international commerce.
Admittedly, I haven't been doing this for 20 years, but I have been doing it for at least the last four, so while not very seasoned, I'm also not as green as you seem to imply. It's not naiveté that I speak from, it's idealism - it is a given we will have a patent system and it's not going anywhere. I think we're striking a decent balance between rewarding inventors for their disclosure while not encouraging the wild west land grab that has been the patent granting process for the last 10+ years. To that end, KSR did a good job of resetting everyone's expectations as to what should be considered obvious and it reigned in the CAFC. I think everyone can benefit from the system and to that end I am happy to drink the koolaid and have faith in the system.
To your point re: the quality of the disclosure - it is dependent on many factors and in light of KSR I bet you'll see much better ones. Since claim scope will be narrowed, a more specific specification will be required to support it.
Re: suing sooner rather than later, there are many reasons to file sooner. In fact it's the whole concept behind laches - you can't just sit back and rack up damages while others rely on your lackadaisical position and then come to court asking for piles of money. While I don't agree with the original poster of that comment's reasoning, and while many factors play into when to sue and when not to, at some point the law should step in and say "sorry, you missed your chance" - it's basically the reason patents have a built in statute of limitations in their expiration date.
I may come across as "inexperienced," but I'll take idealism over being jaded any day.
-p-
Andrew @ Oct 25th 2007 6:56PM
Well, Sandisk does make some pretty amazing players (and pretty much anything flash). I just hope this ISN'T some BS lawsuit (that guy starting a class action against Seagate for "misrepresented storage" comes to mind) and I don't have to hate Sandisk.
I wouldn't mind seeing Sandisk come into some (RIGHTLY EARNED) monies though, and crank out even more greatness.
Oceanjam86 @ Oct 25th 2007 11:59PM
Do we know where this information is coming from? I'm still skeptical about their 32GB SCANDISK View article lol