SanDisk Sues 25 Companies for Patent Infringement 202
dnormant writes "Suits have been filed against 25 companies by the SanDisk corporation this week, as the company looks to stop businesses from shipping products it alleges are infringing on its work. SanDisk has filed suits against everyone from MP3 player manufacturers to USB hard drive creators. The list of defendants is staggering, and MacWorld notes if Sandisk succeeds it could have repercussions outside of the courtroom. 'The company filed two lawsuits in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Wisconsin, one alleging the infringement of five patents in the ITC complaint, and another one including two additional patents not involved in the ITC action. The court and ITC complaints could affect the prices and availability of products made by companies targeted in the suit if SanDisk wins and the companies are barred from importing products into the U.S.'"
Great (Score:2)
Low flash prices couldnt be left alone, could they?
Re:Great (Score:4, Insightful)
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Almost content-less article (Score:3, Informative)
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Indeed. I read both of TFAs, and I can't find a single mention of what aspect of drives is meant to have been infringed.
... I should think the floppy drive or any number of items wou
Surely they don't have a patent on the idea of an "external device which acts as storage" or removable media
Re:Almost content-less article (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Almost content-less article (Score:4, Insightful)
If that's the one, it should be shot down again due to recent SCOTUS rulings: all the items in that patent simply do what anyone with knowledge of those components expects them to do when you put them together; you're just using memory as memory, and you're keeping track of how much you use so you don't use things too much.
Nothing non-obvious about that.
Now, if there's a particular wear-leveling algorithm, then that could be patentable, but the the general idea should not be.
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Re:Almost content-less article (Score:4, Informative)
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Wow. A method of using a slightly different form of non-volatile storage to behave the same as other well established forms of non-volatile storage. Secondary clauses for implementing a filesystem type concept over top of it. Possibly enclosing the whole damned thing in a box and adding cables to be compatible with existing data protocols.
Unbelievable.
Cheers
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The way it looks it probably is the problem. From their corporate section they claim the following:
SanDisk currently has approximately 780 issued U.S. patents, and more than 400 foreign patents, and is the only company, worldwide, that has the rights to both manufacture and sell every major flash card format , including CompactFlash®, SD(TM), miniSD(TM), microSD(TM), MultiMediaCard(TM), Reduced Size MultiMediaCard (RS-MMC(TM) ), Memory Stick PRO(TM) and related Memory Stick® products, xD-Picture Card(TM) and USB flash drives.
Their claim seems pretty broad. It's hard to tell what's going on until they present their argument.
I read that as (Score:2)
SanDisk currently has approximately 780 issued U.S. patents, and more than 400 foreign patents, and is the only company, worldwide, that has the rights to both manufacture and sell every major flash card format
I read that as "SanDisk is the only company that makes ALL of these formats", not "SanDisk is the only company with the legal right to make EVEN ONE of these formats". Specifically, RS-MMC and xD-Picture Card aren't very popular, having been largely replaced by SD family formats, so other companies might not have bothered to take out a license on them.
Re:Almost content-less article (Score:5, Funny)
Funny thing is... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Funny thing is... (Score:4, Informative)
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my experiences were good... (Score:2)
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Their hardware may be cheap, but they had some interesting product ideas. The U3 stuff was interesting, for instance.
Re:Funny thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The U3 developers are retards. The highest demand to remove their crap is probably from non-windows users. So they go and release a windows only removal solution. I had never heard of U3 before and I hope they die a slow painful death in bankruptcy.
I'll second that: U3 is crap (Score:2)
U3 Developers are retards.
Just uninstall U3 (Score:3, Interesting)
Directions are listed above and I can't stand U3. I agree with Sans disk that is retarded to have programs on Windows dependent on the registry which means you can't run the same apps anywhere but U3 is a bad way to fix this.
Infact U3 is a security bug as you can't just delete it and it installs itself automatically as a driver. U3 installs itself with autoplay automatically and even after delete the program off the drive. It
Ah yes, U3... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it was "interesting" in the same way that a colonoscopy is.
Oh well. It could be worse - their competitors (Sony) put rootkits into everything.
*looks at san disk cards* (Score:3, Insightful)
Shame I'm not buying another SanDisk after this.
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Really? Why?
Every time someone tries to enforce a patent claim people make these knee-jerk statements.
If their claims are legitimate and based on genuinely innovative technology, and they're also working in good faith to make reasonable licensing deals with infringers, then maybe you should be boycotting the parties being sued for infringing with no license instead.
The patent system is wildly abused, but some times it does protect innovators that drive the ind
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No it doesn't. Patents have nothing to do with "driving industry forward". Remove patents and the competetive pressures remain unchanged, which is what drives innovation. And you cannot prove otherwise. Progress existed long before patents were even thought of.
Or you mean you are spouting an item of industrialist faith, upon which the utterly misguided idea of patents is based, without any proof
Re:*looks at san disk cards* (Score:4, Interesting)
They motivate people to find alternatives to expensive yet ridiculously obvious "inventions", thus making huge progress in fields such as compression, encryption, search technologies etc.
Not exactly the intent behind the system, but it seems to work pretty well. If GIF hadn't been patented, we wouldn't have PNG now.
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Umm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
"The court has decided that the patents are valid and the defendant must refrain from distributing products that implement the patented technology. But only inside this courtroom, of course. Out in the real world you can do whatever you want... Have a nice day."
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Re:Umm.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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MacWorld notes if Sandisk succeeds it could have repercussions outside of the courtroom
Not to nitpick or anything, but that's a really pointless statement. Court decisions always have repercussions outside of the courtroom. There wouldn't be much point to having court decisions if they didn't.
Actually, not to further nitpick or anything, but most patent suits don't end in court decisions; they end in settlements. And settlements don't typically have much effect outside of courtrooms. (Unless it's a truly massive settlement - but even the RIM/Blackberry settlement didn't really affect consumers.)
If Sandisk is very successful and an injunction issues, then that could have a much bigger impact outside the courtroom than if money simply changes hands. My point is simply that a lot of different
So hard to read the summary without crying. (Score:3, Informative)
Any case that does not have repercussions outside of the courtroom is worthless. What point is the submitter trying to make?
Press Release (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/PressRoom/PressReleases/PressRelease.aspx?ID=4025 [sandisk.com]
Is it public what patents they are suing over yet? There seem to be no real details anywhere...
The List (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The List (Score:4, Informative)
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We could make a list. Or, Why I could make a hat, or a brooch, a pterodactyl. . .
I hope this isn't the first step... (Score:4, Insightful)
Lawsuits are almost *never* the first step (Score:2)
1. Cheap
2. Surprisingly effective, if someone didn't know they were doing something wrong
The lawsuit usually comes about after you send the threatening letter, and the recipient replies with a politely-worded message like "go pound sand"...
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TransMeta just rece
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Laches (Score:2)
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What's especially surprising is that the company suing, SanDisk, actually manufactures things. Usually the plaintiff is not involved in manufacturing products that could be alleged to infringe upon the patents owned by the defendant. Expect to see several of these companies to countersue... they should be able to find some vague patents in their portfolios to throw back at SanDisk.
Wow (Score:3, Funny)
Note who is not being sued.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple
Samsung
Micron/Lexar
Sony
Each of these seems to be a major player in these markets....
What deals (if any) do these guys have with SanDisk so they aren't getting sued?
Re:Note who is not being sued.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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In this case, it looks like the common saying "Any publicity is good publicity", won't work for San Disk. Their products have never been jaw-dropping or even cheap.
The quality of their products don't have anything to do with this. Anyway, SanDisk does have some seriously interesting products. I was planning on upgrading my fan-less PC with a 40 MB/s Compact Flash card + firewire drive. These are products that any serious photographer will or should love, and which are unavailable from any other manufacturer.
I'm opting for dual USB sticks instead, but only because of cost (I'll just RAID-0 them). For the price of the reader I will be able to buy 16 GB of USB-stick mem
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Of course I also have a camera on order which also supports UDMA which can take advantage of this card.
I looked at Sandisk, and
Re:Note who is not being sued.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If the patent system is intended to exclude competitors, then even if it works as intended it still squelches any hope of a free market. We can either have free market capitalism or government granted monopolies, not both.
Free Market / Monopolies (Score:2)
No, you can also have a hybrid that is more efficient than either extreme. One that promotes inventions by granting temporary monopolies. This give the little guy a chance. In either extreme the little guy has no chance, he either gets crushed by big corporations or big government.
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Do you have any evidence that this happens in practice? (And by evidence, I mean a link to some sort of economic article.)
Everything that I've seen indicates that patents are only useful for larger players to keep smaller player
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Do you have any evidence that this happens in practice? (And by evidence, I mean a link to some sort of economic article.)
Haven't you taken Econ 101? "First Movers" have an advantage when they have proprietary technology.
Too much "harmonization" (Score:2)
No, you can also have a hybrid that is more efficient than either extreme. One that promotes inventions by granting temporary monopolies.
But how long should such a monopoly last? One problem is that lawmakers are headed toward "harmonization" of statutes across industries rather than looking for what term of exclusive rights is best for each industry. That's part of why computer programs are copyrighted until 70 years after the last author dies: because somebody thought that copyright term was optimal for a literary work of fiction. The industries operate on very different timescales, yet lawmakers want to race to the bottom by "harmonizing
Invention is not necessarily a new product (Score:2)
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Well DUH! if everybody is using such new technology it is because it is good. There are some companies which licensed the invention to the patent holder, the ones that did not do that and just copied the technology are the ones that are bein
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Patents expire.
Thanks.
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That's exactly why the patent system exists. Take that away, and there's no need for patents at all. I think one thing that should be addressed is these submarine patents. If you don't complain about an infringing product, you should lose your right to patent protection. With millions of patents on the bo
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By the same token, with millions of products in the world, it's impossible for anyone to verify (quickly) that someone is infringing on their patent. While I agree patent trolls are evil, the alternative seems impossible to be remotely fair about, which would mean more power for larger corpora
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"If you patent flash memory technology, you shouldn't have the right to stop all other companies from making similar products"
So you think a better system would be some company spend millions or billions of dollars developing a better way to do something, and then someone can spend a small amount of money reverse engineering and cloning it and then undersell the original developer because they spend next to nothing on R&D because they ripped it off. The Chinese are particularly adept at reverse enginee
Re:Note who is not being sued.... (Score:5, Funny)
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Personally I dislike U3 almost as much as real player and yahoo messenger 8.
They have patents of their own? (Score:5, Interesting)
Another possibility is that the companies not being sued have cross-licensing agreements in place with SanDisk.
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I do know one thing, I'm going to be disinclined to deal with SanDisk at this point unless it's shown that
they really DID try doing the negotiations work and didn't just delay this action u
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Details? (Score:3, Interesting)
The Yahoo/PC Magazine article seems to be cut off at the end. It stops at "for infringement of five SanDisk patents, including:".
They waited ALL these years.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Doesn't patent-enforcement and claims for damages, etc, require ongoing, active enforcement?
Seems to me they waited all these years, found out they need a MAJOR cash infusion, and they see all these companies as an income stream. Kinda like lying in wait (yeh, the "victims" are aware there MAY be a trap around the bend, but are hoping no one is lurking...), hoping a court will rule in their favor.
Looks like the "staggering(ly)" long list is a clue they are gold-digging.
Re:They waited ALL these years.... (Score:4, Informative)
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I expect a lot of Laches defenses being erected as well as
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No it does not. This is sadly a very common misconception. You're thinking about trademark law. Patents and copyrights are valid until they expire or are explicitly invalidated in court or similar.
And yes, this is one of the many problems with patent law.
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Still, though, it should be a mitigating factor when the DO end up in the courtrooms. Despite case precedents.
Thanks for enlightening me, though.
Unfortunately not (Score:2)
Personally, I think we do need an enforcement clause. Something along the lines of "If a company takes no action against an infringing product for 12 months from a time when they should have bee
Yeah, that'll help (Score:2)
Let me refresh your memory [slashdot.org]
Hardware patents (Score:3, Interesting)
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Suppose I patent a new type of op amp. If someone accidentally creates that arrangement of transistors as part of a larger circuit, are they in violation of my patent? The problem with patents is that you do not have to knowingly infringe them to be subject to a lawsuit. Patents should be reformed to be more akin
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Are you asking how it is or how it should be?
If you're talking about how things should be, I would say you should be able to patent the specific hardware that implements the algorithm, but not the algorithm itself. If somebody implements it with hardware substantially different from yours, or in software, they should
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Companies, however, will try to take patented ideas/products and get around that protection, because it's cheaper to get to market, undercut the developer and then handle the lawsuits. They might be in discussions with the technology d
'State of the art' already advanced (Score:2)
The state of the art has already been advanced, consumers have already benefited, by the offering of temporary monopolies to inventors. SanDisk and others would not have invented these great memo
SanDisk bought m-Systems, now sues (Score:3, Interesting)
They couldn't make their MP3 players do very well, the flash drive market is in no-margin-land, and so how do you boost revenue. Hey, Ernie-- we got any patents from that Israeli company we bought a coupla years ago? There's gotta be some money in that stuff.......
The new powerhouse strikes back (Score:2)
Oh, wait...
What Goes Around Comes Around (Score:3, Interesting)
I also find it humorously ironic that if this works, it could result in the US missing out and not being able to get certain products, or at least needlessly paying more for them.
SanDisk + Microsoft money (Score:2)
"Patent Protection" seems to be the cry of all companies working with Microsoft. I bet MS did some nudging on this one.
Small/New companies need patents (Score:2)
It is also the cry of small/new companies that hope to compete against Microsoft and other mega corporations. Without patents, the little guys have virtually no chance.
So should I wait... (Score:2)
Whatchathink?
Patents should be eliminated (Score:3, Insightful)
Patents no longer encourage innovation, they destroy it. Unless the U.S.A. wants to continue its disastrous economic slide, it had better do something pretty quickly. HUGE international companies with no economic loyalty or tax revenue to the U.S.A. are seeking to prevent american companies from doing business.
Maybe patents have some value for the truly "non-trivial" things, but everything I've seen and heard the last few years is that mainly trivial landmine and submarine patents are getting approved because they are flooding the patent office.
The patent examiners are no longer guarding against bogus patents, the work load is too high, the pressure to allow patents is too high, and they are relying on the courts to do their job.
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Wrong. It helps any nation, not just a fledgling one. Patents increase the rate of technological advancement, eliminating patents would destroy the US economy faster than the current mess. The solution to junk patents and junk lawsuits is not eliminating patents.
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This is provably false in the current international economic state, it is IP lawyer dogma.
The patent system was intended to be sort of a shopping gallery for people with ideas to link up with people with capital so that industry could be born.
These days, almost no business is started patent first, patents only come after the fact as "protection" from other patents.
The modern engineer and scientist almost *NEVER* looks at patents, therefor the supposed "o
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Wrong.
patents only come after the fact as "protection" from other patents.
What are you trying to say here? A patent does not "protect" you from another patent.
Almost any respectable economist will tell you that patents overall promote innovation. A lack of IP protection in third world countries is also a large reason those countries continue to stay third world.
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No I'm saying that is not what they are supposed to do.
Almost any respectable economist will tell you that patents overall promote innovation. A lack of IP protection in third world countries is also a large reason those countries continue to stay third world.
Nonsense, you don't think repressive governments have anything to do with it do you?
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Proprietary technology is considered crucial to entrepreneurial efforts, virtually required by angel investors and venture capitalists. Without it a new venture is vulnerable to free riders who will replicate products or services without having to replicate or contribute to the original inventor's R&D.
Again, you confuse the abuse of the current patent system with patents in
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That is a common view of course, but do you think the "successful" companies started this way? Nope.
Re:It's times like these... (Score:5, Funny)
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There are some legitimate reasons to go down this path, you realise? Not everything is as obvious as the Amazon one-click patent, or the guy who patented swinging on a tire.