Seagate drops patent suit against SSD maker STEC, runs home crying
By Laura June 
posted February 25th 2009 10:07AM
posted February 25th 2009 10:07AM
Well, that was pretty anticlimactic. Seagate, which filed suit against SSD-maker STEC back in April -- claiming the company infringed on four of its patents for SSD interfaces -- in March after talking quite a sizeable game about similar possible actions against the big boys (Intel and Samsung), has just dropped the claim. Seagate said that the case against STEC was "no longer worth pursuing" because economic conditions are now so bad that STEC isn't really selling many of the SSDs in question. That all sounds a little like saying "Monopoly stinks, let's play something else" when you're losing so bad you only have Baltic Avenue left, but maybe that's just us. 
Hey now, the Baltic avenue monopoly can be a very valuable asset when playing monopoly.
Oh so we can only sue each other when the economic impact can be passed on to the consumer? If these companies would concentrate on inovation instead of suing they might make more progress.
This statement fails to realize that patents are one of the main economic motivations for pursuing innovation. If you innovated and everyone took your idea, you wouldn't gain anything from innovating. By awarding sole ownership of the idea to a company for a limited time, it becomes worth their while economically to look for better ideas in the first place. Law suits are the company's way of enforcing these patents.
Just one side of the argument, perhaps, but it's a very legitimate, logical, and empirically founded side.
Doesn't work like that. When you patent something, you prevent others from also using the technology, even if they also invented it. That is, person A, working in isolation, invents the TurboWidget. Person B, working in isolation, also invents the TurboWidget, one day after Person A. Person A gets monopoly. Person B only finds out they've wasted millions when Person A sues them.
Once upon a time, when the world had three inventors, this regime might have made sense as that set of circumstances occurred very rarely. Today it happens ALL THE TIME. In fact, I'd guess that virtually every software patent ever filed involves technology that has since been independently "invented" several times over, usually by people who see the technology as so blindingly obvious they'd never even think it was patented in the first place.
Who actually wants to develop in that climate? Since when has innovation been fostered by an environment in which nine out of ten people who research problems and try to develop solutions for them risk being sued into oblivion by the other one out of ten?
Patents are an anachronism. There are very few industries that might benefit from them, and if we can't identify those industries, the chances are we'd be better off getting rid of the system altogether. It doesn't work. It suppresses innovation. Patents have outlasted their usefulness.
@Dan, Squiggleslash:
I think you guys bring up a very important subject. If I were either very wealthy or of keen business sense, I might be a proponent of the current evolution of the patent system. Unfortunately I'm just a guy who wants to bring a cool idea to the world - I could feasibly pay for one round on a full patent filing, but I certainly couldn't bear the legal costs of a lawsuit where the bigger fish has a team of the best lawyers that can talk my case out of a courtroom.
In my particular case, there are patents already existing for just about every aspect of the system, and from many years ago. However, there are less than a handful or companies that have done anything with them to any appreciable result. I've already made working models of my idea, to great fanfare by whomever sees it, but if I were to invest my life-savings or get investment capital I'm afraid I would lose it immediately.
How is anyone expected to innovate when the big, lazy extremely-broad-patent holders are just waiting for someone else to prove that a market exists before yanking power away from them?
@Dan,Squiggleslash:
I don't think throwing out the concept of patents entirely is the way to go. What we should do is have a new standard for "obviousness". One-click, for example, is obviously obvious to anyone with a modicum of intuition about human interface design. All that is is caching data and simplification of the user interface. But how can you prove it was obvious?
Well, I think we should have a standard like this: Idea X is patentable if
a) X has been feasible for 20 years, and
b) No one has done X
that way, you aren't punished for being a small player in a new market (like commerce on the internet or mobile phones). But if you have an idea that would make, for example, a better mop handle, you could get patent protection for it, rather than having it copied immediately by the established players whose established production, logistics, and distribution channels and relationships would otherwise make it not worth your time to develop your idea.
Seagate is running out of cash.
they can't pay the suits to argue for them...
AHAHAHHA!!!
they have no honor...
I thought seagate where saying they wernt going in the SSD game...
The guy that made that statement was their old CEO Bill Watkins...
Wait, Seagate makes SSDs? That's very new to me.
How can STEC not be selling any? It's an STEC in every Dell Mini 9, I know that much. Face-saving maneuver by Seagate?
I agree. If they weren't selling anything then why was Seagate even interested in going after them. I think this was their way of saying "we're interested in buying you."
Seagate drops pant suit!
Haha!
They actually dropped the suit because I informed them I was not happy.
lol
but seriously Monopoly does stink !!!
Laura,
I know I'm being a Grammar Nazi here, but seriously, you have got to edit your posts better.
"Seagate, which filed suit against SSD-maker STEC back in April -- claiming the company infringed on four of its patents for SSD interfaces -- in March after talking quite a sizeable game about similar possible actions against the big boys (Intel and Samsung), has just dropped the claim."
Taking out the part you emphasized, you end up with this sentence:
"Seagate, which filed suit against SSD-maker STEC back in April in March after talking quite a sizeable game about similar possible actions against the big boys (Intel and Samsung), has just dropped the claim."
Please, for the sake of everyone that reads this site, at least make your sentences more readable.
waterboy99troop