Seagate has delivered the first blow of its assault on SSD makers. STEC, a maker of solid state drives for industrial applications, today announced that Seagate has filed suit in a San Francisco court for patent infringement. Earlier this year, Seagate CEO Bill Watkins had foreshadowed the possibility of patent infringement lawsuits against SSD makers in the event that the newfangled devices start to impact Seagate’s sales of traditional hard drives.  Seagate did not contact STEC prior to filing the suit.

STEC is one of the first companies to build SSDs, having designed, manufactured and shipped SSDs as early as 1994, long before any of the suggested patents were issued to Seagate.

STEC believes that Seagate’s action is a desperate move to disrupt how aggressively customers are embracing STEC’s Zeus-IOPS technology and changing the balance of power in enterprise storage. Seagate is sending a clear signal that it recognizes STEC as the leader in the SSD business and is attempting to slow down part of the growth that STEC is gaining through its SSD offering, particularly in the enterprise segment.

STEC’s announcement

Seagate, for its part, had nothing of note on its website regarding the case.

Patents in Question:

1. Solid-state mass memory storage device (#6,404,647)
   
2. Surface mount IC stacking method and device (#6,849,480)
3. Hardware assisted memory backup system and method (#6,336,174)