When the separation between Western Digital and Sandisk, the first one has received notification that will have to pay 315.7 million in damages for patent infringement related to data encryption technology owned by SPEX Technologies.
According to Reuters, the patents were initially approved for the Spyrus company and primarily cover data encryption technologies originally used in Compact Flash and PCMCIA devices. Western Digital denies the accusations and has expressed its disagreement with the verdict, which it has assured that it will appeal.
These patents were purchased some time ago by SPEX Technologies, which sued Western Digital in 2016 for violating two of them, which allow a peripheral device to communicate with a device to which it connects to allow the peripheral to perform one or more operations. with the data stored on the device to which it is connected.
The two patents date back to 1997, and cover device operations related to a security protocol, which covers everything that involves interconnections. Both patents applied to Compact Flash and PCMCIA cards, as we have mentioned, and expired in 2017, but the lawsuit was filed a year earlier, which has caused the courts to approve it and a federal court in California has decided that Western Digital’s self-encrypting storage devices violate them.
Meanwhile, the split between Western Digital and Sandisk, announced in 2023, continues to move forward, with its Flash and SSD storage divisions already operating under two distinct brands. The company has confirmed that they have already divided their product ranges into two websites, «westerndigital.com for HDD drives and storage platforms; and sandisk.com for all flash-related devices, including SSDs, memory cards, and USB flash drives«.
The company has also assured that the creation of two differentiated websites has been taken to «enhance the positioning of each franchise to develop innovative technology and product development, as well as to take advantage of unique growth opportunities and expand their respective market leadership positions and operate more efficiently with different capital structures«.
So, on the Western Digital website From now on you can purchase platform products and HDD devices from the following brands: Western Digital, WD, WD_Black and SanDisk Professional. In the secondOn the other hand, you can purchase the flash technology products from the Western Digital, WD, WD_Black, SanDisk and SanDisk Professional brands.