The largest manufacturer in the world of hard disk drives, Seagate Technology, has launched a lawsuit against STEC, a manufacturer of solid state memory (SSD) for the violation of certain patents on storage technologies. If wins or agreed, the consequences could fall on the industry and impact heavily prices and availability of the iPod and iPhone.
In particular, the reason for the contention derives from the violation of several patents on correcting errors, systems backup memory and finally interfacing of data storage devices with computers. If the court gave reason to Seagate royalties payable may become a sort of tax cut for each fixed memory SSD, with a consequent increase in prices for the final consumer and a significant impact for Apple, which is one of the largest buyer world of this kind of memories.
According to analysts, STEC with its $ 188.7 million turnover seems only a “field trial” of sustainable thesis Seagate, because much larger producers (such as Intel, with its $ 38.3 billion per year) are likely to fall in the same network. And so, while the CEO of Seagate claims to do simply - and legitimately-the interests of its shareholders, the other accused STEC bluntly Seagate to launch accusations as unfounded threatened by the progress of flourishing market for SSD.
Western Digital could soon join this campaign because, along with Seagate, are the two companies with multiple patents relating to storage technologies.