A decade-long lawsuit pitting the tiny company Convolve and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology against giant Seagate Technology has taken an unexpected turn after a whistle-blower claimed that Seagate appropriated Convolve technology and later destroyed evidence in the case. The whistle-blower, a former Seagate employee named Paul A. Galloway, has provided what is described as “an eyewitness account” accusing Seagate of taking hard-drive technology from Convolve and incorporating it into its own products, according to documents filed recently with a federal court in Manhattan. The court filings include claims by Galloway that Scotts Valley, CA-based Seagate, the world’s largest producer of computer hard drives, tampered with evidence tied to Convolve’s nearly 10-year-old patent infringement case against the company. The allegations are detailed in an affidavit filed by one of Convolve’s lawyers as part of an effort to reopen the voluminous court record to include testimony from Galloway. A conference on the case has been scheduled for Jan. 20, though it’s not clear whether Convolve’s motion will be considered at that session.
The patent infringement case between Convolve and Seagate dates to 2000, when Convolve and MIT sued Seagate and Compaq Computer seeking $800 million over technology that reduced the noise and vibration generated by hard-disk drives. MIT researchers had developed techniques to reduce the noise of a hard drive without significantly impairing its performance. Convolve was formed to help market and sell this and related technology. According to court and regulatory filings, representatives from Convolve and Seagate met in 1998 and 1999 to discuss some of Convolve’s work, subject to an agreement that Seagate would not make improper use of what it learned in those discussions. In 2000, Convolve sued Seagate and one of its customers, Compaq, claiming that the “sound barrier” technology Seagate introduced in 2000 relied on Convolve’s sound reduction innovations. In the nine ensuing years, Convolve and Seagate have exchanged hundreds of documents under court-ordered discovery and filed myriad legal motions against each other.
The affidavit detailing Galloway’s allegations was quietly filed last month. The motion, filed by an attorney representing MIT and Convolve, says Galloway disclosed that Seagate’s engineers zeroed in on improving the company’s sound reduction features only after seeing Convolve’s technology. However, these engineers were not aware that Seagate had a nondisclosure agreement in place that should have protected Convolve’s innovations. “I was deceived by my management’s failure to tell me that the Convolve technology discussed within Seagate was NDA protected,” Galloway states in one section of the affidavit. According to the filing, Galloway also alleges that Seagate appears to have intentionally destroyed some software blueprints linked to products using the sound reduction technology. According to court documents, Galloway previously was a witness for Seagate in the protracted litigation. Convolve has also sued Dell, Hitachi, and Western Digital in regard to similar technology. That case is pending in a federal district court in Marshall, TX.
Source: The New York Times