History (1993): Syquest Cartridges (Illegaly?) Manufactured by French Start-Up Nomai

Nomai SA, a start-up based in Avranches, France, started to manufacture, in a new plant, 44MB and 88MB cartridges compatible with SyQuest ones.

But on December 9, SyQuest filed a lawsuit vs. Nomai, which announced 2 days later that it would vigorously, defend itself.

Nomai was founded this year by its director, Marc Frouin, a former executive and owner of the French group Chess (Top for the Mac, Jasmine) that went bankrupt at the end of 1991.

He said that there are many patents on SyOuest disk drives, but few on its cartridges, that’s the main reason he set up his new company with the intention of manufacturing these cartridges, and first the 44MB and 88MB ones.

“We have been manufacturing these cartridges only since November 11, because we have had delays on account of technical problems. We have produced between 5,000 and 6,000 and our monthly output capability is 8,000,” said Frouin/

But he did not necessarily intend to work vs. Syquest and was ready to find an agreement with the Californian company.

Discussions began between both parties, SyQuest attacks However, the relationship between the two companies seems to have worsen.

SyOuest Technology (Fremont, CA) has recently filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court vs. Nomai and Srinivasan “Ravi”Chari, a former technical consultant to SyQuest (and for 2 months for Nomai) for theft secrets, unfair competition and other wrongful acts. The court has issued a temporary restraining order enjoining Chari and anyone acting with him from developing, manufacturing, marketing, distributing and selling removable 5.25-inch Winchester disk cartridges for use in SyQuest drives. The complaint also states that SyOuest’s testing of a sample cartridge manufactured by Nomai reveals that it could cause catastrophic head crashes.

“We intend to use the full extent of the legal process here and abroad to protect our customer base vs. potentially damaging and deceptive products and to safeguard our 10 years of research in removable cartridge disk drives vs. misappropriation“, said Syed H. lftikar, president, COB and CEO, SyQuest.

Nomai counterattacks
Nomai announced, on December 11, that it found that the claims made vs. it were completely unfounded and without merit. It is considering a counter suit vs. SyQuest for anti-competitive trade practices and for slanderous and libelous statements.

“We had given early prototype samples of 4 cartridge to SyOuest as a friendly gesture for evaluation,” said Frouin. “SyQuest told us the samples met theirs specs. Their public story is not consistent with what they’ve told us privately. We plan to ship only those cartridges which meet or exceed the quality of SyQuest’s and we plan to continue to expose third party testing that demonstrates the superiority of our product.“

Concerning Chari, Frouin said that, when this one, one of the best and rare specialist on servo-writer, had worked for Syquest in 1990, he had then signed an agreement to not disclose any information, but he had no restriction on his previous experience.

“We have an insurance that will pay our lawyers who are very confident,” added Frouin. “The truth is that we have been negotiating with SyQuest for a long time and we were very close of reaching a possible economic agreement. SyOuest is trying to score a point in this agreement by filing a suit. This will delay us on the US market because we have to wait until a court decision. But we will be more aggressive in Europe.”

It looks like at the beginning, Nomai had started to discuss over the drives but not the cartridges with SyQuest, and after a while, this later was surprised to see that Nomai began manufacturing cartridges, SyQuest vigorously reacted.

It’s obvious and clear that SyQuest cares for its cartridges that are manufactured in Fremont, CA and accounted for 50% of the company’s total revenues in FY91, a rate that keeps on growing, and is the main part of its income; when the drive manufacturing, entirely based in Singapore, is unprofitable.

But on another hand, the fact that SyQuest has always wanted to monopolize the entire manufacturing, has had fatal results for the US company and that’s why SyQuest never managed signing large OEM contracts which could have considerably broadened its market.

At MacWorld Expo in San Fransisco, CA, Syquest had launched the SQ5110C, to replace the SQ5110. The new drive is able to read and write on 44MB and 88MB cartridges. It will cost around $600. On account of technical problems the SQ5110 could only read 44MB cartridges, which considerably limited its success

This article is an abstract of news published on the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter on issue ≠60, published on January 1993.