Cipher Data Products of San Diego has...
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Cipher Data Products of San Diego has been denied its motion for a preliminary injunction that would have kept Archive Corp. from selling a line of 5.25-inch tape drives until the companies’ patent dispute involving the product is settled in court.
The dispute revolves around loading technology employed by both companies’ products that enable tape cassettes to be inserted sideways into the tape drives. A trial date to settle the patent validity and infringement battle has been tentatively set for May.
Cipher claims that the technology is covered in a patent awarded to the company in 1986, while Costa Mesa-based Archive contends that the products actually use Archive technology that was licensed to Cipher Data under 1981 and 1983 agreements.
At stake in the suit could be Archive’s leadership in the 5.25-inch tape drive market. Archive accounts for about 20% of the $400-million market for the products, a kind of computer data storage device. Analysts said Cipher’s position in the dispute was bolstered in June when it settled a similar patent-infringement action against Wangtek.
In a statement hailing the court’s denial of the motion, Archive Chairman D. Howard Lewis said, “We feel strongly that Cipher’s patents are invalid and not infringed and that we will prevail in court next year.”
The motion for the preliminary injunction was filed in September in U. S. District Court for the Central District of California.
“The fact that the motion was denied has no bearing on the ultimate disposition of the litigation and does not preclude us from seeking an injunction at another time,” Cipher Data spokesman Peter McGuirk said Thursday.
