Western Digital Corp., the Lake Forest-based maker of disk drives, and its top rival on Thursday got slapped with a lawsuit that alleges the companies infringed on two patents.
Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based Rembrandt IP Management LLC is suing Western Digital and Scotts Valley’s Seagate Technology LLC for the alleged infringement of patents owned by one of its subsidiaries.
The two patents in question allow data to be written at higher speeds and greater densities on drives.
The technology “paved the way for the high-capacity drives prevalent in today’s marketplace,” Rembrandt said in a statement. “The defendants are manufacturers and suppliers of computer hard drives that are at the heart of widely adopted digital consumer electronics, such as personal computers, laptops and digital video recorders.
Rembrandt said it acquired the patents from inventors Uri Cohen and Dennis Hollars.
The lawsuits were filed in U.S. district court in Madison, Wis.
A spokesman for Western Digital declined to comment.
Earlier this year, Western Digital surpassed Seagate as the No. 1 drive maker by product shipments. Seagate still is tops by revenue, as it gets more of its business from pricier drives for servers.
Rembrandt is among a class of companies that make money by acquiring patents, striking licensing deals and collecting a cut of royalties from companies that appear to be infringing on them.
When it finds a company suspected of infringing on a patent, it tries to strike a licensing deal, or sues. It makes money by splitting the proceeds with the patent holder.
Newport Beach’s Acacia Research Corp. has a similar business model.
