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Hardware SanDisk Sues 25 Flash Drive Manufacturers
Brandon Hill (Blog) - October 25, 2007 1:51 PM
Print 33 comment(s) - last by SavagePotato.. on Oct 26 at 10:32 AM

SanDisk Cruzer Micro Titanium  (Source: SanDisk)
SanDisk throws down the gauntlet when it comes to its flash patents

If you're going to file a lawsuit, why not go all out? That seems to be the case with SanDisk's latest lawsuit against USB flash drive manufacturers.

SanDisk has filed a patent infringement lawsuit with the United States International Trade Commission (ITC) as well as two lawsuits with the Wisconsin District Court. Five SanDisk patents are being addressed with the ITC case, while seven patents are being fought over in the two Wisconsin District Court cases.

The list of companies feeling SanDisk's wrath is a virtual "who's who" in the USB flash drive industry. Companies like LG Electronics, Buffalo, Corsair, Kingston, Verbatim Transcend, PQI, PNY and Imation/Memorex are all named in the lawsuits.

"These actions demonstrate SanDisk’s long-term commitment to enforcing its patents, both to protect our investment in research and development by obtaining a fair return on that investment, and out of fairness to third-parties that participate in our patent licensing program," said SanDisk Chief Intellectual Property Counsel E. Earle Thompson.

"Our goal is to resolve these matters by offering the defendants the opportunity to participate in our patent licensing program for card and system technology. Otherwise, we will aggressively pursue these actions, seeking a prompt judicial resolution awarding damages, obtaining injunctive relief and banning importation of infringing product," Thompson continued.

SanDisk is seeking damages for the infringements and is asking the ITC to ban the importation of products that are in violation of its patents.

SanDisk is no stranger to U.S. court system. SanDisk and Toshiba both received subpoenas from the U.S. Department of Justice in September for alleged NAND flash price fixing.

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Great thumbnail
By Michael Hoffman on 10/25/2007 2:11:38 PM , Rating: 1
Awesome thumbnail from a great movie! :)




RE: Great thumbnail
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 10/25/2007 2:20:27 PM , Rating: 2
Yes, I think it's an unofficial contest here to see which writers can come up with the best thumbnails for an article :O


RE: Great thumbnail
By Aarnando on 10/25/2007 2:31:00 PM , Rating: 2
It is a great thumbnail, but it doesn't relate to the article in any way I can distinguish. I give it a 5 for excellence, and a 1 for relevance.


RE: Great thumbnail
By flyboy84 on 10/25/2007 2:54:37 PM , Rating: 5
Actually, it is related to the article in my estimation. For anyone who doesn't know, that is Gary Oldman in the Professional. I'm not sure where that particular thumbnail is from, but it may well be from the scene where he screams "I WANT EVERYBODY" (meaning he wants a full police task force including a SWAT team to go after Leon). This is akin to SanDisk unleashing a 25 in one "I WANT EVERYBODY" type lawsuit. :)


RE: Great thumbnail
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 10/25/2007 3:00:34 PM , Rating: 5
Actually, this was the EXACT intention of the thumbnail. I went all through Google Image Search to find the screenshot, but couldn't.

So I went and got my "Leon, The Professional DVD" and took a screen capture with Power DVD, then shuttled it over to Photoshop and cropped it.

Given the audience that reads DailyTech, I thought that the reference would surely be picked up by more than a few people.

That being said, the actual line is:

Norman Stansfield: Bring me everyone.
Benny: What do you mean "everyone"?
Norman Stansfield: EVERYONE.


RE: Great thumbnail
By Aarnando on 10/26/2007 9:20:57 AM , Rating: 2
Now it makes sense! I recognized the movie, but it's been so long since I've watched it that I didn't remember the lines associated with the scene. Even without knowing the line it was funny to imagine Sandisk as a violently intense cop played by Gary Oldman.


RE: Great thumbnail
By SavagePotato on 10/26/2007 10:32:57 AM , Rating: 2
Actually he says it more like, EVVVV REEEE ONEEEEEE!

Just plain old EVERYONE! doesn't come close.

The MPAA is gonna get you for copying an image. Look out there they are now.


RE: Great thumbnail
By johnsonx on 10/25/2007 5:54:43 PM , Rating: 2
Death is.... whimsical today.


Why now?
By timmiser on 10/25/2007 2:11:33 PM , Rating: 2
The flash drive industry has been a huge deal for many years now so why is Sandisk doing this now after so long?




RE: Why now?
By kileil on 10/25/2007 2:15:52 PM , Rating: 3
Probably because flash memory is becoming such a low-buck commodity item. Sandisk realized it can't beat others on price, it can't differentiate it's product, so the best way is to nail them with licensing fees.


RE: Why now?
By PandaBear on 10/25/2007 5:32:13 PM , Rating: 2
My guess is that there is a supply shortage on the market, and many these companies are using NAND from Toshiba, so if they can sue to ban these companies from selling flash or reduce the amount (i.e. don't make USB, just make SD and CF) they ship, then 1) reduce competition in the market and 2) more supply that sandisk can buy for cheaper price.

Sandisk and Toshiba share a FAB, so any additional parts that Toshiba couldn't sell can be grabbed/used by Sandisk easily without any additional engineering work.


RE: Why now?
By TomZ on 10/25/2007 7:29:13 PM , Rating: 2
There's not a supply shortage in the NAND market right now. That's why prices continue to fall like a rock.


RE: Why now?
By PandaBear on 10/25/2007 7:36:51 PM , Rating: 2
According to dramexchange, Toshiba is sold out for the rest of the year, and in the earning conference sandisk said they will tap outside supply to cover their shortage.

Maybe not a market/industry wide shortage, but sandisk only.


Rambus all over again...
By j@cko on 10/25/07, Rating: -1
RE: Rambus all over again...
By johnsonx on 10/25/2007 2:10:16 PM , Rating: 1
Sandisk is one of the oldest flash memory makers. Isn't it possible they actually do have some patents that they've decided it's time to defend? Patent holders are obligated to defend their patents, or they lose them.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By Micronite on 10/25/2007 2:43:28 PM , Rating: 3
Additionally, SanDisk actually manufactures the flash. Therefore they show a "Reduction to practice". Essential to patent enforcement. Also, SanDisk's patents were not obtained by or concealed from an industry standards group.

These two things (among others) distinguish SanDisk from Rambus.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By defter on 10/25/2007 2:55:30 PM , Rating: 1
So why Sandisk isn't suing other flash makers? Like Intel or AMD?

Majority of companies on the list (like the Sandisk itself mostly) do not manufacture flash. They just buy flash chips and package them in thumbdrives/memory cards. That's why this lawsuit sounds very fishy, basically Sandisk is claiming that only they should have a right for packaging flash chips??? Come on, this isn't a rocket science, just connect flash chips with a controller and a right connector (CF/SD/USB whatever).


RE: Rambus all over again...
By Master Kenobi (blog) on 10/25/2007 3:20:30 PM , Rating: 2
Yea. Flash maker Samsung is not on that list and they are THE leading manufacturer of Flash memory.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By PandaBear on 10/25/2007 5:28:21 PM , Rating: 1
Sandisk is suing about "system pattern" which means the controller that uses the NAND. Samsung build NAND, and is a supplier of SanDisk. (You don't shit where you eat and sue the supplier)


RE: Rambus all over again...
By ChipDude on 10/25/2007 4:21:06 PM , Rating: 2
Why not AMD/INTEL? Because they primarily used to make NOR that didn't compete with SANDSK. That is different for INTEL these days as they are doing NAND.

Also AMD/Spansion and INTEL flash have been spun off, more so to protect the CPU bottom line then to protect against this in the books.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By johnsonx on 10/25/2007 5:51:44 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
So why Sandisk isn't suing other flash makers? Like Intel or AMD?


Because those other companies either aren't violating any Sandisk patents, or have properly licensed the technology from Sandisk.

quote:
basically Sandisk is claiming that only they should have a right for packaging flash chips???


Where do you get that from?


RE: Rambus all over again...
By PandaBear on 10/25/2007 7:32:56 PM , Rating: 2
SanDisk have a cross licensing agreement with Intel on NAND, and as a result Micron/Intel JV (IM Flash) can build NAND without paying Sandisk a dime.

Sandisk is suing the "system" level of design, not the interface. It is like how do you "wear level" or "interleave" a NAND efficiently or reliably. (That's my understanding)


RE: Rambus all over again...
By Screwballl on 10/25/2007 2:12:10 PM , Rating: 3
I would rather see more specifics before I make that kind of judgment call. Either they have a legitimate case that will take 3 years and untold amounts of money.... or they are full of s**t trying to take credit for public patents that they may have slightly altered in order to get other company's products off of the shelves internationally, even if only for a short time.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By darkpaw on 10/25/2007 3:05:49 PM , Rating: 2
I'd like to see some specifics too. Unfortunatley, there was only a link to the press release that did not have links to the legal filings. I'd be interested in knowing exactly what patents they are claiming infringement on.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By Alexstarfire on 10/25/2007 4:38:31 PM , Rating: 2
I'd like to see some as well. If they patented the idea of a thumb drive though then I hope they lose. If it has to do with the actual chips and how the device is setup, or something similar, then I guess they have a legit case.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By Hoser McMoose on 10/25/2007 5:13:30 PM , Rating: 2
If they patented the thumb drive and it's an honest-to-goodness patent (ie no prior art) then they very much deserve to win. This is the sort of invention that patents are designed to protect, a new idea that is non-obvious. While a thumb drive might seem obvious now, it certainly wasn't 10 years ago when the first ones were being worked on.

FWIW a quick Wikipedia search suggests that SanDisk DOES indeed own the patent to a flash USB key design. The patent was owned by M-Systems who were bought out by SanDisk last year. There may be some prior art to it though.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By TomZ on 10/25/2007 7:33:33 PM , Rating: 2
Judging from the wording of the press release, I would guess the alleged patent infringement is broader than just USB thumb drives:

SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today announced the filing of three patent infringement actions against 25 companies that manufacture, sell and import USB flash drives, CompactFlash cards, multimedia cards, MP3/media players and/or other removable flash storage products.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By TomZ on 10/25/2007 7:38:27 PM , Rating: 2
To add to that, I did a quick search of US patents for SanDisk, and I can see a list of 529. Many of them are related to flash memory. I would guess that any other company in the field of flash memory would face a "mine field" trying to avoid one or more of SanDisk's patents.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By Alexstarfire on 10/25/2007 8:38:25 PM , Rating: 2
I don't think it's exactly right to be able to patent an idea. In this case it would be using flash memory as a portable storage device. If that's the case then SanDisk effectively has a legal monopoly on all thumb sticks.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By TomZ on 10/25/2007 9:02:45 PM , Rating: 1
Check this one out:

United States Patent 7,190,617; Harari, et al.; March 13, 2007

A system of Flash EEprom chips with controlling circuits serves as non-volatile memory such as that provided by magnetic disk drives. Improvements include selective multiple sector erase, in which any combinations of Flash sectors may be erased together. Selective sectors among the selected combination may also be de-selected during the erase operation. Another improvement is the ability to remap and replace defective cells with substitute cells. The remapping is performed automatically as soon as a defective cell is detected. When the number of defects in a Flash sector becomes large, the whole sector is remapped. Yet another improvement is the use of a write cache to reduce the number of writes to the Flash EEprom memory, thereby minimizing the stress to the device from undergoing too many write/erase cycling.

That sounds broad enough to cover nearly all the "smart" flash devices on the market today. Wow.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By PandaBear on 10/26/2007 2:49:29 AM , Rating: 2
Depends on how you design your system, you may be able to avoid it. The patents sandisk is suing for are about how you rearrange sectors when they wear out, and how you handle parallelism among chips/cores efficiently. Without it your card will still work, just not quite as fast as it could have been.

To give sandisk credit, they somehow manage to get 20MB/s with MLC memory when everyone else need to use SLC to get 24MB/s, and it manage to get 45MB/s with 4 way interleaves SLC with the same ASIC as the 20MB/s MLC card. I don't think anyone other than Mitron's super expensive SSD (or Samsung's custom ASIC that cost way more) were able to achieve that.

Rumor has it that sandisk bought m-system because of some potential patents and future pending patents that could give them a huge headache. After all, it did pay over $1B for a rival that doesn't own a fab or build their own memory (controller only), and soon after the merger, a huge portion of the customers left. Why else would you pay so much other than for the patents?


RE: Rambus all over again...
By PandaBear on 10/25/2007 5:24:12 PM , Rating: 1
Not quite like Rambust. From what I understand Sandisk is suing the OEM drive customer of Phison (rebadged Kingston, A-Data, Memorex, etc, all of them are previous OEM customers of M-System that left after Sandisk bought them and jump boat to 3rd party).

Why suing now? No clue, but my guess is either 1) Phison (or another controller company) just stole a bunch of customers from Sandisk/M-system, 2) Phison (or etc) just released a new products that violate a patent of SNDK/M-SYS, 3) The combination of SNDK/M-SYS now has the only way to do a particular types of drive or memory access pattern (i.e. wear leveling or stuff like that) that everyone else will violate for sure.

Funny how many of these companies are Toshiba customers, but SNDK didn't sue Toshiba directly, but its vendor (Phison) and customers instead.


RE: Rambus all over again...
By PandaBear on 10/25/2007 5:26:13 PM , Rating: 2
Oh, BTW, M-System used to have a minority stake in Phison with Toshiba, so maybe that's why they were not suing them before, and now SNDK/M system don't own any shares of Phison anymore, so the relationship is no longer there.


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