Santa Ana’s STEC Inc., a maker of flash memory drives for industrial uses, is being sued by the top maker of disk drives, Seagate Technology LLC.
Scotts Valley-based Seagate along with its subsidiaries claim that STEC violated four patents that it registered between 2002 and 2006.
STEC makes flash memory drives that industry insiders refer to as “solid state” because they have no moving parts. They typically are smaller, more durable and require less electricity to power up and operate.
Seagate is the No. 1 maker of traditional disk drives, which have spinning disks called platters, a needle-like reader and other chips and connecting parts.
It competes directly with Lake Forest-based rival Western Digital Corp., the No. 2 disk drive maker.
STEC is an indirect rival, because it has a corner on the market selling solid state drives for use in storage networks by large corporations and the military.
STEC’s biggest customers are EMC Corp., IBM Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Hitachi Ltd., Dell and HP, among others.
Solid state drives have been seeing a boost of late as companies turn to them to save money on energy costs. But they’re still more expensive than disk drives.
STEC came out with a statement against Seagate, saying it was one of the first companies to build solid state drives, with products on the market as early as 1994,”long before any of the suggested patents were issued to Seagate.”
“Given the effect solid state drives are having on the hard disk drive market, STEC believes that Seagate’s lawsuit is completely without merit and primarily motivated by competitive concerns rather than a desire to protect its intellectual property. STEC believes that Seagate’s action is a desperate move,” the company said.
The company said it will “aggressively pursue its defense” and will take “appropriate action to protect its interests, including seeking the invalidation of Seagate’s patents.”
