A pre-emptive lawsuit from IBM asking the US District Court in Washington to rule that its 3.5 Winchester patents are invalid, uninforceable, vague and lacking novelty, and tough competition from Maxtor with a 170Mb 3.5 drive (CI No 389), are not the end of Rodime Plc’s woes. The Glenrothes, Scotland firm must also now share a part of the Apple Computer business it has counted as its own – orders from Apple accounted for 40% of its business in the most recent quarter. Apple has gone to MiniScribe Corp, Longmont, Colorado for an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 20Mb SCSI 3.5 drives for the Macintosh SE, saying the company was more local, had higher production capacities, and that it did not want to be single-sourced. The one-year pact is worth from $55m to $83m.
