It seems that those wishing the year could go by without yet another lawsuit sprouting up will be met with disappointment now that the world's two greatest suppliers of hard disk drives have been sued for patent infringement.
It is a more or less unfortunate truth on the IT market that lawsuits and litigations are rather common.
Often will a company or another accuse a rival of anticompetitive practices, while other times a patent holder will claim that its IP was infringed.
It is the latter type of accusation that a certain Rembrandt IP has raised against Seagate and Western Digital.
End-users will know of Seagate (Seagate Technology PLC) and Western Digital (Western Digital Corp.) as the two greatest makers of hard disk drives in the world.
The two have been fighting over the top position for many years and have occasionally switched the no. 1 and no. 2 spots between one another.
Now, both of them have become the targets of patent infringement
accusations, filed with the Wisconsin Western District court.
Apparently, Rembrandt IP holds a pair of patents, no. 5,995,342 and 6,195,232, which it bought from Uri Cohen.
These patents describe low-noise toroidal thin film heads, which are used in high-density magnetic recording solutions.
The company claims that Seagate and WD employ the technology in most of their hard drives.
Rembrandt IP is now demanding that the two giants pay a 'reasonable royalty.' Considering the high number of products that allegedly infringe those patents, a pay-out would consist of a substantial sum
"We believe based on information that [Cohen] communicated and on our further investigations that there is infringement," Rembrandt's chairman, Dr. Paul Schneck explained to Ars Tehnica.
As one would expect, neither Seagate nor Western Digital have, so far, actually issued any sort of comments in regards to this action.
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