03/24/2008, 2:25pm, EDT
Monday, March 24thSeagate CEO threatens SSD suit, trashes Air
Seagate may pull a lawsuit as its trump card if solid-state drives (SSDs) threaten to undermine its conventional hard drive business, company head Bill Watkins has said in a new interview with Fortune. The executive alleges that both Intel and Samsung are violating patents dealing with the interaction between computers and storage and that a formal complaint could follow that would either force them to change their technology or else compensate Seagate for their purported infringement.
Neither Intel nor Samsung has commented on the validity of the claims, which ay hinge on substantial price drops for SSDs. Watkins argues that this is unlikely and dismisses notebooks that rely heavily or exclusively on solid-state drives, such as Apple's MacBook Air or Lenovo's ThinkPad X300. Flash drives that are both as fast and reliable as rotating hard disks often cost nearly $1,000 more than their counterparts at the same physical size.
The price of solid-state drives is expected to plummet in 2008 even as capacities increase. Samsung will offer a 128GB SSD before July that will effectively replace the 64GB SSD in use by several notebook makers, while 80GB and 160GB Intel drives should also quickly drop the price of SSDs due both to technology improvements and a need to clear excess supply. Toshiba is also shipping an inexpensive 128GB drive.
Filed under: industry, upgrades/storage
Other story tags: Intel, Samsung, MacBook Air, Toshiba, Lenovo, ThinkPad, Seagate
, 
, 21
, 
, 
, 
, 
Top
subscribe to comments
for this article
posted by eldarkus
Candle makers sue Edison.
Horse Breeders Sue Ford.
Radio Makers sue Magnavox.
TV makers sue Microsoft....
Please. People have been booting off of alternate devices (CD's, USB, External HD, floppies) for years.
Seagate should have seen this coming and invested in this technology. Instead of being whiners, they could have opted to be leaders.
posted by dynsight
Our liberal economy and state of mind will destroy all that we have if this next generation doesn't find a way to undo the laziness of the previous last 2 generations...
posted by jameshays
i could not have put it better myself
posted by MiMiC
posted by danviento
posted by Guest
I love how these folks like to dismiss something when they know good and well that it will often become a standard in the near future.
posted by lamewing
Of course, you're complaining about trial lawyers in this when none are involved. And, in fact, you have no clue as to the nature of the patent claim, and, as such, have no idea whether it's a warranted claim.
But, hey, someone's thinking of suing someone associated to apple, so they must be evil!
posted by testudo
I only saw where it mentioned it as an example of a laptop that uses an SSD_
Pathetic_
posted by UberFu
"Seagate and Western Digital (WDC), two of the major hard drive makers, have patents that deal with many of the ways a storage device communicates with a computer"
So I guess Seagate doesn't feel any threat from Toshiba or Samsung already making HHDs?
Interesting_
posted by UberFu