This could be bad... dear god I dont want to have to spend money for Solid State Drives till they are cheaper. Hybrid drives also fall under this lawsuit.

Finding new hard drives in the US could get quite difficult in the near future. The International Trade Commission is planning to investigate five companies for manufacturing the drives using patented products. The companies being investigated are Seagate, Western Digital, Toshiba, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard.

The complaint was filed by California residents Steven and Mary Reiber under section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930, which bans importing of goods that infringe on patents held by US citizens or companies.

If the investigation conclusively finds that the companies are in violation of the patent, the ITC could issue a cease-and-desist on the importation of the drives. The companies involved either manufacture the drives in question or sell products that contain them.

All could not be lost though. Even if the ITC rules against the five companies, an appeal in the US Court of Appeals or a veto by President Bush could overturn the decision. Qualcomm found itself in the same situation earlier this year when Broadcom accused the company of infringing on its patents for managing power consumption. The ITC issued a ban on importing mobile devices that used Qualcomm's chips but this was later overturned by the US Court of Appeals.

A reform of the US patent system has been called for by many over the last few years and the idea is currently making its way around the White House. A new bill was passed by the House of Representatives last month to update the law in a number of areas.

God I love patents...

(/not)

 could you imagine what Microsoft would charge for an SSD based hard drive for the 360. A 32GB SSD drive is $700 they would charge like $1000.

i saw a similar article earlier. What exactly is it they are claiming is patented in these harddrive??

HA! I would love to see US banning Hard Drives. That would be hilarious! Don't worry about it, it won't happen. Worst comes to worse the patent holder will just settle. Best case, this case helps people realise that the patent system is completely borked

These:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6354479.html
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6935548.html

basically it sounds more like they are owned by a patent whore.  

Patent trolls are coming out from under every bridge these days to sue anyone and everyone.

Unless this one can demonstrate that they are actually using the technology and a company like IBM can't slap them with prior art (IBM has patents to pretty much everything under the sun and access to ninja-vampire-pirate lawyers...), they're going to be crushed into the ground by the tech industry.

Just like any other major patent case, this will be thrown out (most likely) or settled (less likely due to the size and proliferation of the market, patents carry little weight 15 years down the road when something has gone mainstream).

Like 99% of other tech patents, this will go nowhere fast.

How about the companies being effected, HP, Dell, Seagate, and Western Digital. They all have some powerful lawyers behind them.

I use IBM as an example of a company with very strong patent tracking. I expect those company actually being targeted to have their own competent legal counsel (if not at IBM's level). Usage of technology and demonstration of prior art are the big subjects for patent cases.

I'm wondering where these cases will be tried though. Usually patent trolls target Texas but with the ITC involved, a fairer battle ground may be chosen.