Rembrandt IP management has two patents that could significantly affect the hard drives of the country. Two cases on patent infringement have been filed by the company against Sea gate and Western Digital Company.  These companies manufacture a number of hard drives and related products. The case filed by Rembrandt is for getting fair judgment on patent infringement. The company argued in the federal court that most of the hard drives manufactured by the opponents violated two patent rights that they have purchased from its inventor.

Dr Paul Schneck, the Rembrandt chairman told the media that patent infringement affected their products. The complaints filed included the names of Seagate products such as Free Agent, Black Amour, Replica, Armor, Barracuda, Savvio, Expansion., Cheetah, Pipeline, Momentus, constellation, SV35, and DB 35 hard disk drives.  The products of Western Digital included My BookLine, share space, my passport, elements, RE3, Scorpio and Caviar.

The hard disk drive industry of the country has an annual turnover of $12 billion. Rembandt does not intend to pull down the opponent’s share in this turnover. Instead the company wants a justifiable sum as royalty charges to cover for the usage of technology

The patents under controversy are about the use of toroidal films for the read and write heads which helps to reduce the magnetic interference.

The two controversial patents are concerned with low-noise toroidal thin film read/write heads which can minimize interferences due to magnetic fields. Interference and noise significantly affect the storage capacity of the hard drives.

Worthy of value.

Rembrandt had purchased the patents from Uri Cohen who had filed them in 1997. The inventor had done an independent study of the drives of the Seagate and the Western Digital. He found out that his inventions were being utilized by the companies without paying royalty to him. He couldn’t secure licenses for the same and was also lacking money to file a legal suit for the patents. He took the next alternative step by selling his inventions to Rembrandt who took up the case for the inventor with their finances.

Although the Rembrandt was convinced of the infringement on the patents, it didn’t approach either of the two companies before filing the litigation. The company has filed the case in the western district of Wisconsin due to the experience of the court in litigation cases.  If the patent infringement is proved, then there will be trouble to more drive manufacturers.