Tuesday, January 3, 2006

Cornice Cross Licenses Hitachi IP, Shows Perpendicular Recording Technology

Longmont Colorado-based Cornice, a provider of micro disk drives for the mobile and consumer industry, announced today that it has signed a long term patent cross-licensing agreement with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. The two companies will cross license their hard drive patent portfolios. No other terms were disclosed. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is the company that was formed from IBM's hard drive technology business and Hitachi's drive business in 2003. Separately, Cornice also said that it is now demonstrating perpendicular recording technology, a technology that it believes will power its next generation products starting in the second half of 2006. Perpendicular recording is the recording of disk data bits in a vertical alignment, and is one of the technologies expected to allow disk drive companies to reach the next level of recording densities.