History (1995): Seagate Pursues Cross-Licensing Policy

Seagate Technology (Scotts Valley) has long preferred cross-licensing agreements to lengthy and costly lawsuits. Of course, it’s easier to reach such accords if one already possesses a healthy patent portfolio.

Seagate has just signed two new cross-licensing agreements with Japanese enterprises on components for disk drives, one with Asahi Komag Co., the other with Showa Denko KK.

With Asahi Komag, the agreement encompasses magnetic head suspension assemblies primarily designed to attach magnetic heads to a support or positioning device, along with associated manufacturing equipment developed for use in the fabrication of magnetic heads and suspension assemblies.

The agreement with Showa covers magnetic recording disks, associated components and subassemblies, as well as the manufacturing tools to fabricate these platters.

To date, Seagate has forged licensing agreement for HDDs or their components with such companies as Areal Technology, Headway Technologies, Hitachi, IBM, Maxtor, NEC, Quantum, Read-Rite, Toshiba and Western Digital.