Seagate Sues Cornice Over Storage

Seagate Technology has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against storage vendor Cornice, alleging that Cornice's one-inch Storage Element mini hard drives violate six of Seagate's patents.

The patents cover a variety of technologies used by the devices, including the guiding system for the actuator arm that scans the surface of the disk for data, says Seagate spokesperson Brian Ziel.

The lawsuit, which was filed this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, seeks to prevent Cornice from selling the Storage Element drives in the U.S., as well as unspecified monetary damages, Seagate says.

Cornice, which is based in Longmont, Colorado, declines to comment.

Mini Multimedia Storage

Cornice's drives are used in MP3 players manufactured by a number of companies, including IRiver and Digitalway.

Seagate expects to launch its own one-inch mini drive in the third quarter of this year, Ziel says.

The company unveiled the drive at an event in Tokyo earlier this month and will offer it in two versions: one for embedded use and one in a Compact Flash case.

It will be available in two capacities: 2.5GB and 5GB. The Storage Element drives from Cornice are available in 1GB and 2GB versions.