also equivalent to U. S. #4,744,055 ("erasure means")
which should be fun to analyze. my notes show that
that this and pre-cursor patent 4,667,309 possess initial
claims that are very general, but that different
drive-makers certainly have varying erase techniques
which apply to different circumstances.
parameters include write & erase power, modulation method,
sequencing of laser energy, and initialization state
preparation (he said pseudo-authoritatively...)
so, how does a sony or an HP or a Ricoh CD-RW drive, driven by
software such as Adaptec's code (one kind erases
once per session but writes in different passes, another
kind directly overwrites, etc.) read on this patent?
an important question is how a drive-related patent
can be applicable to media makers. the puzzle here is
whether japanese patent law entertains the notion of
"contributory infringement", which may be the key to
ECD's legal strategy. that is, if any ricoh disk can be
used by a drive maker employing the patents' methods,
it does not matter exactly how ricoh, wearing
the drivemaker vs disk maker hat does it.
answering this in the affirmative will allow one to
short-circuit some claims analysis as well as study
of ricoh's 1991 erase method technical paper (in
Proc. Int. Symp. on Optical Memory).
it certainly is curious that when may 1998 rolled around
that Sony immediately signed up for an extended license
but that Ricoh did not.
i remain optimistic that *none* of this good fortune
is priced into the shares yet.
--retiarius |
