Ausdauer, whether the Sony Memory Stick is or is not subject to royalties due SNDK is an excellent question to pose to SNDK.
Eli was asked by an analyst whether the current licensing revenues included Memory Stick royalties way back in the Fall of 1998. He replied to the analyst something like this, "I am not sure where you get your information, (implying they get no royalties from Sony) but we certainly would be happy to wrap our flash chips in purple plastic if Sony asks us."
I believe, but am not certain, that the '987 patent is based, in part, on the ATA standard. Devices using a non-ATA interface such Memory Stick (the "MS interface"), MMC & SDMC (the "MMC" and "SDMC" interfaces, respectively) may skirt the ATA-disk drive emulation patents. This is not to say that additional SNDK IP cannot be included in Sony's products (the controller & flash chip combination, the use of cell blocks for addressing the memory chip,...), but I have never heard anyone from SanDisk make an argument in favor of this scenario.
My investment in SNDK is based on the assumption that Sony pays no direct royalties to SNDK. There are almost certainly some pass-through royalty revenues on the flash storage portion of Memory Stick that are essentially "invisible" to Sony.
Ausdauer |
