Seagate Drops Patent Suit Against STEC

Last April, Seagate sued SSD manufacturer STEC, charging that STEC had violated four of its patents relating to error correction, memory-backup systems, and storage interfaces with computers. However, late last week STEC announced that Seagate had dropped its lawsuit against the company.

The lawsuit was dropped after "extensive discovery and evaluation of STEC's intellectual property and technology." No money was exchanged and no licensing of technology occurred. In other words, Seagate realized it made a mistake.

In a press release announcing the dropping of the suit, Manouch Moshayedi, chairman and chief executive officer of STEC said:

"This is an important development in light of the mass adoption of SSDs. With Seagate having dropped its case against us, we believe the uniqueness of SSD design relative to traditional HDD technologies has been established. We have always contended that SSD does not borrow from existing hard-drive technology but rather offers an all-together new approach to storage. In addition, since STEC plays a major role in the proliferation of SSD technology, we view the dismissal as a vindication of our technology. We have a 15-year history of SSD design and development, over which time we have amassed strong SSD intellectual property. We have always maintained that the allegations brought against us by Seagate were without merit. With this case behind us, we can now optimize our resources to take full advantage of the market opportunities at hand."