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Regarding the Armstrong FM patents, I believe my source was as accurate as can be found. However, if Armstrong gave his FM patents to the industry, there still would be nothing to prevent RCA from inventing improvements that could be patented. That would be true to a certain extent for Lexar. The company could have invented something new, but still be using other designs for which it must pay royalties, and obviously hasn't being paying. Patents are great assets, and U.S. patent laws give reasonably good protection, and often better protection than foreign countries, which tend to look at patent attributes in the most narrow, restricted manner. When all this litigation is finally sorted out, SanDisk ought to emerge as the winner in a contest in which SanDisk is more like David, while the goliaths are more akin to Toshiba, Hitachi, and Sony. |
