*WARNING*, !PANIC!, <MAYEM>, $KY IS FALLING!!,
and then again...
From an Q197 Iomega 10K (thanks to the Ken Marcus web site),
Accordingly, the Company took immediate steps to protect its rights and obtained from the Landgericht Court in Hannover, Germany, a preliminary injunction against the Defendant (Nomai). The injunction was served on the Defendant on March 19, 1997, and prohibits the Defendant, for an initial period of six months (unless earlier canceled by the court), from manufacturing or offering its planned product in Germany. To the Company's knowledge, the Defendant has not to date announced or offered its planned product for sale, in Germany or elsewhere. In support of the Company's claims against the Defendant, the Company's French counsel obtained materials from the Defendant's premises on March 19, 1997, in a seizure process permitted by a French Court. The Company then filed suit against the Defendant on March 25, 1997, in the District Court in Paris, France, alleging unfair competition, copyright infringement and patent infringement.
The bold emphasis is mine. I don't know what hearings or procedures were done at the end of the six months but it looks like the ban was to be lifted around this time anyway.
Part of the reason Iomega may not have been able to shut Nomai down earlier this year may have come from the fact that several of Iomega's patents were still pending at the time of the original injunction (any patent attorneys out there?). Now that Iomega has actually received many of these pending patents they may have a much larger repertoire of legal responses.
Still though, it's hard to figure out what Nomai is playing at. At the very least it appears to me that there is no way Nomai can legally reproduce the retroreflective marker device covered by US Patent 5,638,228 issued on Jun. 10, 1997. If someone sees differently on this please post. (PS. Here's something to try... cover up the little clear plastic piece on the back corner of a Zip disk with a small piece of masking tape and then try to insert it into a Zip drive!)
Regards,
mark_b
Patent Abstract 5,638,228
A cartridge for a data storage disk drive has a retroreflective marker. Light from a source is reflected from the marker almost exactly on its incident path. This property makes possible unique identification of the cartridge with minimal senstivity to light reflected from other surfaces. The marker enables a disk drive enable circuit so that the drive cannot be used with improper cartridges which might damage it. Also, a retroreflective marker is used for write protection of the cartridge. |
