Convolve Received $5.4 Million in HDD Patent Case

The latest patent infringement lawsuit sees Dell, Hitachi/Hitachi GST and WD as being guilty of violating patents for HDDs.

In a case filed in thhe U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall, Division, N.Y.-based Convolve, Inc. was accusing Dell, Hitachi and WD of infringing on patents 4,916,635 and 6,314,473.

The first patent, entitled Shaping command inputs to minimize unwanted dynamics, was filed on September 12, 1988 by Neil Singer, a principal at Convolve, whilst the second one System for removing selected unwanted frequencies in accordance with altered settings in a user interface of a data storage device, was filed on March 4, 1999.

Both patents are related to controlling the seek time and acoustic noise levels of storage devices. The lawsuit asserts that Dell’s Dimension 2400, Dimension C521 and Optiplex 740 models infringe its patent. In addition, Hitachi HDS722580VLAT20 Deskstar hard disk drive and Hitachi L020 and Hitachi L030 storage products as well as Western Digital’s WD 400BB, WD800 JB, WD 1600, WD 2000 and other hard drive models also violate the patents licensed by Convolve.

The federal jury said Dell should pay to Convolve $1.5 million, WD $2.5 million and Hitachi $1.4 million.

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