Class Action lawsuit against Seagate Hard Drives?

[Dr Mordrid]

Heads stick to the platter ?

More than once Seagate has used either the wrong or too much lubricant and the heads ended up stuck to the platter. The problem was that when the drive stopped and the heads parked they were still in contact or close enough proximity the lubricant would act as an adhesive. This was called 'stiction' and was always denied by Seagate, but many drives were replaced under customer duress. A tap with a screwdriver handle would sometimes 'unstick' it, but far from always or reliably.

After having to deal with this over several years I swore off Seagate drives.

[Admiral]

Personally I never tried Seagate drives, there was the period when NCQ emerged and I was marginally tempted to buy Seagate.
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I'd much prefer manufacturers to invest in R&D rather than pay lawyers to fight pointless law suits

Slightly off topic from the advertising but on topic regarding lawyer fees, if you find this lawsuit pointless (and I agree) just look at what IBM cooked up (options market for IP). It's not enough that big companies fight over ambiguous patents, now they want the general population at each other's throats and at the same time to outsource the cost.

Here's another scenario proposed directly by IBM itself: Suppose a trader buys into a company's IP options portfolio. He doesn't have to buy the right to any specific patent; he just buys into what IBM calls the company's "dynamic asset pool." Suppose next that a third party sues the trader (not the company) for patent infringement, and that the trader doesn't really have any patent portfolio of his own with which to countersue. Under the IBM proposal, the trader may then use his shares of the company's IP pool, choose the appropriate patent concepts from that pool against which the third party would most likely appear to have infringed, and then assert those patents against the third party in a countersuit just as though the company had asserted those rights to the trader directly.

Under such a system, theoretically, the third party in this scenario also would not necessarily need to be the creator or original assignee of any patent portfolio. Instead, she may be an options holder in another company's IP patent pool, exercising her right to assert her patents in court for a limited time, and having already placed a bet on her own victory. Also theoretically, since this is an options market we're talking about, the third party may also have wagered a premium on the possibility of her own suit's defeat.