Only a day after Seagate went after STEC (formerly Simple Tech), the solid state drive and memory manufacturer has responded to the suit saying they will “aggressively” defend themselves, claiming they began to develop SSDs before Seagate ever had patents for the technologies they use. STEC asserted they have been shipping SSDs since 1994, a decade before Seagate had these patents.

Furthermore, the company claims that Seagate is only taking action because they are beginning to target the enterprise level with their SSD products, a lucrative market that Seagate wants to protect.

That fact alone has to be true, as Seagate's CEO said almost exactly as much in an interview last year. At the time, the Seagate CEO said that if other vendors began making headway into the market, they'd sue. Now that they have made good on their word, we'll see how well their patents will stand up.