Court of Appeal Affirms Novelty of Thumb Drive
Singapore's Court of Appeal dismisses the appeal by four companies - M-Systems Flash Disk Pioneers (FLSH), Electec, FE Global Electronics and Ritronics Components (Singapore) - against an earlier High Court decision in favour of Trek Technology, the Singapore maker of the world's first thumb drive.
The court held that "... In our view, Trek had an inventive concept for a new type of data storage device that was quite different from and more convenient to use than conventional data storage devices. Admittedly, all the elements required for this invention were available to those skilled in the art. Solid-state non-volatile memory was well known and USB plugs were standard. Yet before Trek applied for the patent in question, no one else thought of combining all these elements together. Instead, others continued to produce variations of the magnetic disk or CD-ROM as well as devices that required the use of a connecting cable because they were not intended for direct plugging into the USB socket of a computer. It was thus not obvious to proceed from a two-piece cable-connected prior art to the neat cableless solution presented by the Thumb Drive device."
The amount of damages and legal costs will be determined later and could run into millions of Singapore dollars.
The court held that "... In our view, Trek had an inventive concept for a new type of data storage device that was quite different from and more convenient to use than conventional data storage devices. Admittedly, all the elements required for this invention were available to those skilled in the art. Solid-state non-volatile memory was well known and USB plugs were standard. Yet before Trek applied for the patent in question, no one else thought of combining all these elements together. Instead, others continued to produce variations of the magnetic disk or CD-ROM as well as devices that required the use of a connecting cable because they were not intended for direct plugging into the USB socket of a computer. It was thus not obvious to proceed from a two-piece cable-connected prior art to the neat cableless solution presented by the Thumb Drive device."
The amount of damages and legal costs will be determined later and could run into millions of Singapore dollars.
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