STEC Dismisses Seagate's Patent Lawsuit

Solid-state drive manufacturer STEC claims that Seagate's patent infringement lawsuit is completely without merit and gets ready to prove this in court. According to the filled lawsuit, hard-disk drive manufacturer Seagate accuses STEC of infringing four of its patents that cover mass-memory storage technologies and backup systems.

"Throughout our 18 year history, STEC has been diligent in its pursuit of industry-changing technology while entirely respectful of the intellectual property that has been developed by others. The allegation put forth by Seagate [�] is simply not accurate nor in line with STEC's long history of success and fair play in these markets," said Manouch Moshayedi, chairman and chief executive of STEC.

Seagate's four patents are issued between 2002 and 2006 and cover solid-state mass memory storage devices, surface mount IC stacking method and device, hardware assisted memory backup system, as well as method and system for host programmable data storage device self-testing.

On the other side, STEC has been manufacturing solid-state drives since 1994, which is long before Seagate got its patents on the above-mentioned intellectual property. STEC is also determined to seek termination of Seagate's four registered patents.

According to one of STEC's spokespersons, Seagate's legal action is based more on the fact that solid-state drives are currently posing a threat to its conventional HDD business rather than on its concerns related to intellectual property. In a previous statement, Seagate's CEO threatened that its company would unleash its lawyer army on SSD manufacturers only if their business starts blooming.

"In fact, STEC believes these allegations are in response to the competitive threat that we as a leading developer of innovative SSD technologies pose to the HDD industry. We view this action as Seagate's attempt to slow down the growth that STEC's SSD business is experiencing, particularly in the enterprise segment. We have a high degree of confidence in STEC's intellectual property portfolio," Mr. Moshayedi said.

STEC also claims that Seagate's patents are not relevant to the SSD industry, as it has been one of the pioneers in the development of stacking technology, with patents that date back in 1990s.