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To: Rex Dwyer who wrote (3543)7/25/1998 11:28:00 PM
From: Craig Freeman  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 60323
 
Rex, I'm not a patent attorney but from the abstract you provided I believe one could make a case that SNDK patent 5,602,987 lacks sufficient innovation to be enforceable.

The IDE interface has been applied not only to hard drives but also to super-floppies, tape back-ups and more. To claim exclusive right to use this interface for yet another hardware product would be difficult to defend. Their multi-sector erase might well be patentable if it incorporates a unique algorithm. But to claim that the common practice of write caching is protectable is ludicrous.

Odds are that Lexar will walk into court with a wheelbarrow full of documents showing prior usage of these concepts. IMHO, this will not be a walk-in-the-park for SNDK.

Craig



To: Rex Dwyer who wrote (3543)7/26/1998 10:13:00 PM
From: Ausdauer  Respond to of 60323
 
Rex,

I am glad the submission is dated December of 1993, because I was worried about the fact that it was awarded a patent in February of 1997.

Ausdauer