Seagate Accused of Stealing HDD Tech

Hmmm bitter ex employee anyone?

Ironic that the idea of the engineer being a disgruntled employee never seemed to come up...

Paybacks are a bitch...............

Maybe yes, maybe not, but everyone big company have his secret.

it says he left the company. Can't be bitter if you leave. Some times it's best to come forward than to be involved and get sued or thrown in jail.

Blah, got two WD Green's. Couldn't be more happy. Too bad greed is so prevalent in modern business. There's not any sort of passion for a greater good/technological advances, only profits and $ signs. It's just too bad.

Extremely easy for Seagate's lawyers to paint the ex-employee as "disgruntled". Let's hope he was never heard saying "I hate this place" or "You'll be sorry".

so whats why their harddrives sucks

dont think its game over for seagate

This whole lawsuit is ridiculous. Convolve is suing Seagate because Seagate independently developed technology that has a somewhat similar function to Convolve's tech (though entirely different methods), and the entire lawsuit is bogus from the start. There are absolutely things wrong with Seagate to be sure, but the convolve issue is not one of them.

Oh, and Seagate just had layoffs recently, and July (conveniently) happens to be the month in which pay was cut off for all laid-off employees. Coincidence? Probably not.

Seagate didn't have a chance anyways, WD is on top of the competition when it comes to platter drives..

all I can say is "LMFAO" to Seagate =)

Patent trolls like Convolve, NTP, Rambus, i4i, TiVo and others need to stop harassing companies with frivolous lawsuits. I can't believe the courts sided with the latter three companies even though RIM, memory makers, Microsoft and cable/satellite companies didn't duplicate the technology they were being sued over. They created totally different technologies that did the same thing which is completely legal.

Patent trolls like Convolve, NTP, Rambus, i4i, TiVo and others need to stop harassing companies with frivolous lawsuits. I can't believe the courts sided with the latter four companies even though RIM, memory makers, Microsoft and cable/satellite companies didn't duplicate the technology they were being sued over. They created totally different technologies that did the same thing which is completely legal.

Having a close family relative that has numerous patents, I can tell you that sometimes these big companies would rather knowingly infringe on a patent and claim ignorance as opposed to actually paying for it.

The timing is a little strange, but you never know...

Does this mean HDDs are gonna go up in price? If so, I hope Seagate can reach an understandment/agreement with that company.

Cheers!

are you serious? I for one never bought an overpriced WD hard drive when the alternatively cheaper and equally performing hard drive available from seagate. I'm sure many would agree with me

I believe that if you check into it, you will actually find that the biggest patent, trademark, and copyright filer in the United States, as well as the company with the most infringement claims in United States court currently and for the past several years....is Microsoft.

Microsoft is the biggest, baddest patent troll of them all.

As for them creating "totally different technologies that did the same thing which is completely legal", that is near impossible to prove and substantiate when your representatives have met with, discussed, and overviewed the technology of another company's work and intellectual property.

Besides that, the courts now twice seem to agree that Microsoft "willfully infringed" on a patent. That means they knew of the existence of that patent, and used the technology without permission anyway.

The 800 lb gorilla is about to get thumped.

Here's my question if Convolve and Seagate had a meeting, albeit with NDA firmly in place, and Seagate having gazed and used Convolve's technology to spring board there own is that an infringement? I mean if I came up with an idea based off of someone's else's work but went in a different direction, similar but different is it still an infringement?

There was a famous lawsuit in Detroit in 1990, a jury decided that Ford infringed on Kearns' patent, though it concluded the infringement was not deliberate. Ford had contended the patent was invalid because the windshield system contained no new concepts. But Kearns argued a new combination of parts made his invention unique.

I remember the rational he used about the combination of parts, he give several books to witness that tried to debunk the infringement claims as having no new concept, and asked the witness if the books he handed him were considered unique writings, and the witness said yes, he asked the witness to read certain words like, the, it, and, etc, and asked are these words considered new concepts, and the witness said no, and Kearns said but in there combination it makes the whole unique, which I thought was brilliant.

Could that be applied here?

Don't be a tool. Yes some of those companies may be guilty of patent trolling but don't assume every lawsuit involving patents is trolling. As mentioned in the article, Convolve approached Seagate, under NDA, with their technology, likely wanting their patent/technology bought, leased, or work as a partner, only to find Seagate later just took that technology and used it anyway.

Excellent point. I don't know how so many people jump to conclusions without the details. I believe the situation you presented, about approaching Seagate with hopes of lease/purchase, sounds very plausible.

Well it seems like you have not been in the loop recently... Seagate was a top-notch brand a few years back. Since then they have skimped using inferior parts that in turn lead to disasterous sales. Since the caviar blacks came out they basically wiped there arse with seagate...Even Samsung spinpoints are more reliable and that says alot...

Paying 75 bucks for a 640Gb is not considered overpriced, specially when you get a 5 year warranty and performance that can match any raptor to this date...

That is BS. I've left companies over working conditions and I WAS bitter after I left. He could be pissed because he got passed over for a promotion and this is his way of getting back at the company.

I agree, maybe he left BECAUSE he was bitter.

Ah, Bob Kearns vs Ford case. Hey oORaidOo did you saw the Flash of Genius movie. Look for that movie, it is story of that case.

While Convolve may have a patent on one method of making hard disks quieter, they don't have a broad patent on the idea of making hard disks that produce less noise. This is like saying Phoenix illegally stole IBM's technology when they created their own BIOS for clone PC's even though Phoenix's BIOS was completely different from IBM's.

I agree.. He maybe forgot to read the fine print on the box. Seagate 5 Years vs WD 1 year warranty, some WD retail do offer 3yrs max. Price per GB + Warranty = Seagate is better.

Seagate reminds me of kmart for some reason.

From what i recall Seagate didn't start making good products til they bought Maxtor, which "was" my favorite HDD company.

Seeing their failure rate, they stole the wrong tech

Sounds like Intel and Seagate are run by the same dirtbags.

Ok seriously, stop being fanboys. There were some really good WD drives and some really bad (pricce vs performance & reliability) drives through out the ages. Same goes for Seagate drives. So STFU fanboys.