Hard Drive Imports to be Banned?

Arathon writes "Apparently the International Trade Commission is beginning an investigation that could lead to the banning of hard drive imports from Western Digital, Seagate, and Toshiba, among others, on the grounds that they fundamentally violate patents held by Steven and Mary Reiber of California. The patent apparently has to do with "dissipative ceramic bonding tips", which are important components of the drives themselves. Obviously, a ban would be unthinkable, and yet the ITC has 45 days to settle on a fixed date for the end of the investigation. If the patents are found to be violated, and the Reibers do not allow those patents to be bought or otherwise dealt with, the importation of almost all hard drives would actually be ceased."

useful arts

[Speare (84249)]

And this is promoting the Progress of Science and useful Arts, how, again?

Re:useful arts

[Bert64 (520050)]

Well, it could spur drive makers to create a replacement technology to get round the ban.
But more likely they'd just revert to some older non infringing technology, resulting in inferior drives for any country which enforces the patent.

Re:useful arts

[arivanov (12034)]

Or the country simply voiding the patent on national security grounds. Same way USA voided the Right's brothers patents on aircraft design when they proved to be insufficiently cooperative in WWI. Case of been there, dunnit will do it again. While the congress and administration critters could not quite justify that in the RIM case, in this one they may end up doing it.

Re:useful arts

[dalleboy (539331)]

Who are these Right's brothers you mention? If they where right extremists I think it was the right decision to violate their patents rights right away.

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[by Anonymous Coward]

I think their the guys hew think they invented the plain, though in fact it was George Ceilidh.

Re:useful arts

[phobos13013 (813040)]

Two wrongs do not a wright make, good sir...

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[jsight (8987)]

... but two wrights make an airplane!

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[Goaway (82658)]

Guy don't know how to write Wright right.

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[God'sDuck (837829)]

Encryption's been classified as munitions, so wouldn't a hard drive be classifiable too?

That depends on the velocity of the hard drive.

Re:useful arts

[gravesb (967413)]

Ideally, if these two people actually invented the technology, then they should get paid for it. If people get paid for inventions, then they are more likely to continue to invent, as are others. A patent allows them to shop the technology around and sell it. Without patents, large companies could steal the technology and there would be no monetary reward for small inventors. I'm not sure that's what happened in this case, and the patent system has swung too far in one direction. But that's why there were three SCOTUS cases on patents last term, a few this term, and a bill in the Senate to overhaul the system. Hopefully it will move the system back in the other direction.

Re:useful arts

[aurispector (530273)]

This kind of smells like a patent mugging to me. If all these companies were using the patent, why did it take so long to file suit? Did all these companies ignore due diligence? Is there some sort of standards that were hashed out while the patent was kept underwater like in the Rambus case?

I really think there needs to be some sort of limit on how and when patent holders can do this sort of thing, coupled with some way standards bodies can file public notice regarding intent to use a particular process or design. First to file is not a bad starting point, but prior art could come into play in the context of such a public notice process, e.g. standards board says we are making stuff like this...public period to comment...patents not claimed by 180 days invalid for this case...NO profit for patent holders!

The muggings gotta stop

Re:But do prohibitive prices promote progress?

[Ihlosi (895663)]

Does that promote the progress of science and useful arts?

It promotes science when everyone suddenly has to find a way to work around the patent.

Re:But do prohibitive prices promote progress?

[Saunalainen (627977)]

It promotes science when everyone suddenly has to find a way to work around the patent.

Your reasoning is an example of the fallacy of the broken window. [wikipedia.org]

This is not good for `science', because in the absence of the patent issue companies would be free to direct their R&D to whatever technology they wanted, rather than solving an already-solved problem.

Re:useful arts

[Daniel Wood (531906)]

I don't know the validity of the patent nor do I know if it was a submarine patent, so I can't comment on that aspect. While the ban would have severe financial impact on most of the magnetic storage industry, if not the entire economy, this could be the real kick in the pants that SSD's need. This has the potential massively increase density and lower costs of SSD's in a very short timeframe. If they can cram 16GB on a SDHC card(Due January 08), imagine how much storage they could put in a 3.5" or even a 1.8" SSD. That said, this ban will not be enacted. The federal government will not allow a ban on imports of magnetic HDDs. Not only because of the financial devastation it has the potential to cause, but because it would severely inconvenience the government as well. Remember the whole BlackBerry patent suit?

Re:useful arts

[bstone (145356)]

The patents here appear to be for the tools used to build the drives. IANAL, but I thought that patents covered only the end product. In this case, the patented tool can be claimed, but not everything ever built with the patented tool. This claim would need to be filed in the country where the tool was used, assuming that country has issued a patent on the invention.

Re:useful arts

[BLKMGK (34057)]

Yes because it's so much better to sink piles of money into R&D only to have some other company copy the technology and sell it for less due to their not having to recoup the R&D costs.

Get a clue.

This is how China is taking many American companies (and others) to the cleaners. Why bother to innovate or invent something when you can simply copy what someone else has done at little to no cost? Done often enough and the folks who do the innovative things are going to find themselves bankrupt - then what? I'm all for patent reform and I think software patents need to be rethought but you make it sound as if ALL patents are somehow "bad" and that's just naive. Yes, a limited monopoly can be had with the right patent and this is why they need to eventually expire - and do! The drug industry, abusive as it is, is a good example of this. If you've EVER bought a generic drug than you've seen this process at work. Sadly the drug companies have combated this not by striving for better research but my making minor changes to existing drugs and re-patenting and by spending more on advertisement than they do R&d. Why do we allow them to advertise prescription only drugs to the public exactly?

Re:useful arts

[thegnu (557446)]

Who will step up to continue to innovate, knowing that all of their R&D is only good for a few months at best before somebody else can get a duplicate to market?

Someone who will have saves millions of dollars on the R&D of previous companies. In fact, the previous company you're talking about got to save millions of dollars on R&D, too, because they didn't have to spend 3 years coming up with a new way to get to where the original patent holder is already without infringing.

The fundamental difference between you and GP is that you think that people should have some sort of entitlement because they have an idea, and GP doesn't, necessarily. There's a lot that goes into being valuable to society. For example:

I have Idea, and want to get it to market. However, I am terrible at implementing Idea. Idea is a great great idea, but my product is not. OtherCo comes by and sees my shitty product on the market, and thinks they can do better. So they take Idea and use their own ideas to create GoodIdea. GoodIdea is a good product, whereas my product is crap. I start seeing losses in sales, because GoodIdea just makes more sense then Idea. So I take GoodIdea, and add a couple things that I learned while supporting Idea, and come up with VeryGoodIdea.

In the above model creates 2 good products, starting from one good idea that turned out to be a bad product. If my original idea had been really good, I could have coasted on it for a long long time, but it wasn't, so I couldn't.

Where's the crime?

injunctions aren't required

[gravesb (967413)]

After the eBay v. Mercexchange case, injunctions are not automatic. The ITC could just award damages if it finds infringement, and not stop the flow of harddrives.

Re:injunctions aren't required

[mcelrath (8027)]

Better yet, injunctions should be disallowed.

It certainly harms the progress of useful arts to stop sales and/or development. Instead, patent violation should be assessed only in the amount of money owed from one party to another, calculated as a reasonable fraction of the profit earned from goods in violation of the patent.

If the inventor has a great idea, but an incompetent marketing and/or development, the patent should allow others to compete on the basis of marketing and development, using the same idea, but the patentor should get his due in any case.

In other words, I think all licensing of patents should be compulsory. I can't see any argument why any party should disallow any other party from implementing their patents. It seems this is only ever used for anticompetitive purposes, which harms the market and harms consumers, and is illegal when done in other ways.

--Bob

Re:injunctions aren't required

[Zeinfeld (263942)]

After the eBay v. Mercexchange case, injunctions are not automatic. The ITC could just award damages if it finds infringement, and not stop the flow of harddrives.

This is an ITC action, not a patent infringement suit. The rules are very different and pretty corrupt.

Back in the 1980s when the US feared it was losing its edge a series of bills was passed to create non-tariff barriers to high tech trade. At the time the US HI-tech companies were complaining that their ideas were being stolen. So they created a kangeroo-court process to allow US companies to block competing imports.

Of course this started long before the effects of Reagans gutting of the USPTO review process were beginning to be realized. At the time a patent actually meant something.

Regardless the drive manufacturers will settle. Just think of it as a private tax.

Anyone know when hard drive manufacturers started

[The Evil Couch (621105)]

using this tech? If they started prior to 2001, the Reiber's should be taken out and flogged.

Dissipative ceramic bonding tool tip
Inventors: Reiber; Steven Frederick (Rocklin, CA), Reiber; Mary Louise (Linclon, CA)
Appl. No.: 10/036,579
Filed: December 31, 2001

Dissipative ceramic bonding tool tip
Inventors: Reiber; Steven-Frederick (Rocklin, CA), Reiber; Mary Louise (Lincoln, CA)
Appl. No.: 10/650,169
Filed: August 27, 2003

It swings both ways

[Linker3000 (626634)]

I am an IT Manager:

Oh shit, Maxtor wasn't on the list - PLEASE GOD: please don't make system builders install Maxtor drives, I have enough to worry about without the possibility of random drive failures within the next 6 months - 2 years.

I am an independent computer support engineer:

YES! I look forward to a massive jump in hard disk replacement business within the next 6 months - 2 years.

Re:It swings both ways

[DAldredge (2353)]

One would think that an IT Manager (or consultant as line 1 doesn't mesh with line 3) who posts on /. would know that Maxtor was bought out by Seagate who is on the list.

Follow the law or change it

[tjstork (137384)]

This case is a clearcut proof that the patent system doesn't protect the little guy and the little guy hitting it big with a patent is a total myth.

By all rights, the law that the article refers to is designed to ensure that the little guy has another means of recorse to protect his or her patent. But instead, these companies are going to find a judge that kinda agrees with them, and they will be allowed to import these drives despite the patent violation.

Of course, the right thing to do would be to change patent law so that this sort of infringement is something everyone is allowed to do. But oh no, we still want to leave the patent laws on the books, to protect the big guy, from guess who, the small guy.

The patent has no relation to hard drives at all.

[gmarsh (839707)]

I read the patents. There is absolutely nothing in this patent which is related to hard drives in any specific way. And there's nothing that hard drive makers themselves have uniquely done to violate this patent themselves. This patent applies to *ANY* semiconductor chip. What they've patented here is part of the chip packaging process. When chips are packaged, the silicon die is placed in the center of the IC package, and wires are run between the individual leads on the outside of the package to bond areas on the silicon. These wires are welded at each end by ultrasonic welding using a tiny vibrating probe. Now if you've got a probe flying around doing all this welding work, there's a slight chance it might accumulate some static electricity - and since the probe is touching the silicon die directly it might fry the chip you're trying to pacakge. This isn't a good thing so you ground the probe. But that's not a good thing either; if the chip itself becomes static charged, touching it with a grounded probe might fry it too. So you insert a bit of resistance to limit the discharge current - this is why static wrist straps and static mats, the ESD soldering iron on my desk and so forth have a certain amount of resistance. Their patent is "make that resistance in the chip bonding probe out of ceramic". Which I suppose has some advantages. *shrug* So the actual patent violation works like this: - A semiconductor company (eg. ST, TSMC) fabricates semiconductor chips for hard drives. - A packaging company (eg. Amkor) takes these chips, cuts them off wafers and packages them. Perhaps they use a ceramic bond probe to do this, violating the patent. - The semiconductor company gets the chips back and sells them to the hard drive maker. - The hard drive manufacturer then builds hard drives out of these chips. And somehow the hard drive manufacturer is at fault here, and hard drive imports suddenly have to stop. They don't even directly use the patent - I'm sure they don't give two shits about how the wires are bonded in the chips they use and until know they probably knew nothing about it. If the chip reads stuff off the heads and sends it out the (S)ATA interface, what else do they care about? (But of course, I'm sure by some perverted interpretation of the law, hard drive makers are using the patent and they're liable...) Of course, I'm next in line to get sued. I've sold electronics kits on the internet, and the last one used an ATMega48 microcontroller. If that chip was wirebonded in violation of this patent then I'm obviously the one at fault (not Atmel or whoever) and I gotta pay up! And after that, my friend who drives a cab part time will get sued for patent violation - his car's engine computer could contain a chip that was was wirebonded the same way, and he's making money driving the car and "using" the patent, right? fuck...