People who stand in the way of progress always end up suffering in the long run. Take P2P networking and the music industry. Instead of jumping on board and setting up their own sites with reduced prices and higher quality content (music tracks with cover art and guaranteed sample quality) the industry threw a tantrum and started suing consumers to try and bully the market to play by their rules. The rule is however that the masses always win eventually. When the music industry noticed that their tactics to bully the masses had failed and that their sales had dropped tremendously, they have been forced to embrace the market with cheaper prices, higher quality digital content and easily accessible music libraries much like the open source community were attempting to achieve years before them.

Also, most people wouldn’t know what a SSD was, they’re just concerned with price and capacity.

There needs to be some form of clause with a patant that if you don’t seek damages/royalties immediately, you forfit the possibility of collecting down the line. You can’t patent a whole host of things and wait for one to reach critical mass before pouncing on it…

SSD makers owe Seagate/WD any valid royalty payments for technology they are using, but it can only be as high as thay paid by other hard drive manufacturers.