Slashdot Mirror
Sun and Kingston Legal Battle Over Memory Patents
weez wrote to us with a recent article in Forbes regarding the legal battle that Sun and Kingston Memory have gotten into. Sun is alleging that Kingston (You know - the people who make the after-market memory chips) violates some of Sun's patents and wants royalties. Anyone know a little more technical information than the article? Post below, please.
Correct me if I am wrong here, but Sun is trying to say that they patented "Memory as modules"?? Does this mean, DIMMs, SIMMs, etc? If this was such a big deal for them, don't you think they would've started hunting memory companies sooner? *Sigh* ram prices are now starting to drop, and now they are going to throw this into it? Whats next, the "2-click" check out?
quit ruining a perfectly good trollfest. dont ya know a good trollfest when ya see one??
I'm not against all patents, mind you. But Sun claims a patent on assembling memory chips into modules? That's easily among the most bogus patents I've ever seen. Even worse than the one on the RSA algorithm. And it's not even software-related, surprisingly enough.
That's the thing about patent abuses: software patents by definition abuse the system, but they're not the only types of abuse out there. This is an example of a hardware-based patent that's abusive. One, I very much doubt that Sun was the first to come up with this. Two, it's an idea, not a product; patenting DRAM would be one thing but patenting the idea of assembling memory chips into modules? Lunacy.
The patent system is, in theory, a Good Thing. But it was set up in an age where the things we take for granted now were not even dreamed of, and the rules which worked then don't work as well now. The system needs perhaps not a total overhaul, but at the very least it needs to be updated to reflect the times.
Sun patented a few specific details about the memory modules you buy for Sparcs. It isn't standard PC memory, because of differences in the Sparc bus and error correction issues.
What I am gleaning from this is that Sun already signed away the patent issue with respect to the actual differences between Sparc memory and PC memory and that now they're grasping onto whatever they can (i.e., a DIMM is a Sun patent) in order to force Kingston to ante up so that Sun can line its pockets.
It reminds me of the whole concept RMS discussed about patents being used as warfare tactics in business... It draws a very close parallel to the international politics of MAD (mutually assured destruction).
It'll be interesting to see how all of this pans out as a general principle: the concept of reverse engineering has come under MASSIVE fire of late, and I hope it stops before all third party development is squashed.
But then, a concern was that if Sun was victorious, they would go after ever other manufacturor. Pretty soon that 5-15 millon add up to big bucks for Sun.
And even then, evidently Sun is willing to settle it over a golf game...
Who ever heard of coorporate espionage on a golf course? :)
Do not provoke me to violence, for you could no more escape my wrath than you could your own shadow.
hey, he asked for it, didn't he?
What I don't agree with is their tactics of using patents to try and keep Kingston at bay. They should be looking for value in the product, not the courts.
_________________________
Sun does indeed own a patent on the Single Inline Memory Module, or SIMM. See:
Patent 05270964
Patent 05383148
Patent 05465229
Patent 05532954
These being in order from the earliest to the most recent, though I think these are just different versions of the original.
However, it does look a little different from the SIMM used in most personal computers. The drawings indicate 200 pins, while most regular SIMMS have 30 or 72 pins.
This raises another question: Are DIMMS significantly different enough from SIMMS to avoid the patent infringement?
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
After all, we know that Sun is the only company that sells "open systems", there's no way they would acquire a patent like this, then use it to harrass and extort money from other companies. Since all their computers are "open", the hardware specs are easily obtained, and anyone can create compatible hardware.
Scott McNealy must be the most altruistic person in the world. Why must people dump on him?
Do you have ESP?
This is we have to fight patents, DMCA, THE MPAA, THE RIAA these laws and
agencies block progress, stifle engenuity, raise prices, crush the competion,and
leave the consumer at mercy of a few. The madness most stop!! We need to support
the EFF and others agencies like it so we don't lose the freedoms we already have
http://theotherside.com/dvd/
-----------------------
Nicotine free Amish .sig.
the article seemed to say that Mr. Sun (Kingston guy) not Sun (the company) offered the golf match to Mr. McNealy to settle the dispute... that would be *really* fun to see a webcast of...
hey check this out! i was trying to type "cd" on my slack box, but i missed the "c" and only hit "d [ENTER]".
so what happened? i got the same output i would get if i typed "ls". LS-D, get it? i think ol' patrik has some drug problems and this is his call for help.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
I have always warned people about Sun Microsystems. Many cheered Sun as it nobly battled against Microsoftian oppression and supposedly supported open standards. But Sun and Microsoft are part of the same family - arrogant coorporations that want things done their way and only their way.
Case in point, Java. Sun championed the language and its open standards against MS. However, one can see the true nature of their ideas in their abuse of the truly open Blackdown code.
Sun, just like MS, sees a new world order where they determine how computing gets done. Their vision is simply different from MS's.
Sun: Young Sauron to MS's Morgoth.
YOU DARE QUESTION OOG??? OOG ON TOPIC, STUPID MODERATOR!!! OOG FIND YOU AND BREAK HEAD!!
Hmmm... how bout havin tiger woods pinch hit for one of the companies??
---------------
CoyboyNeal is God
pika pika
How can you lock your hardware so people can't make clones. Patent it.
Look at Nintendo. They have patented this connector to keep people from making connectors.
Sun has done the same to keep people from making memory modules. And is using the courts to prevent just anyone from making memory for thier hardware.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
-=United Coalition of Trolls for the Abolition of Moderation=-
Does this mean prices will go up again?
D A R E Doughnut Abuse Resistence Education
-=United Coalition of Trolls for the Abolition of Moderation=-
I'm CmdrTaco. I run this site, along with Hemos.
GRRR!!!!!
Anyone know what time zone Slashdot's times are based off of? Thanks in advance.
Perhaps 2 decades of available thought about encryption has warped your perspective, but the RSA algorithm was most certainly novel, not obvious, and represented a fundamental advance in thinking about encryption. In some sense it represents the start of thinking about encryption algorithms outside of secret organizations. It likely was the first secure public key algorithm, and the implications of that detail on the possibilities of encryption are hard to overstate.
:-(
So yes, if anything in math or computers should be patentable (a debatable question to be sure) the RSA algorithm should be.
Of course by the end of the lifetime of the patent, the ridiculousness of long patents in software is painfully obvious...
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
I normally don't post at my default +2, but I do so now so that the moderators can go after the trolls.
this really solidifies for me, at least, that sun is a very unethical company. kingston is NEVER the bad guy. to understand why, you have to know where they're coming from. kingston tech is so incredibly angelic that its amazing they're still in business.
the real reason david sun (of kingston) is pissed is that they have literally NEVER EVER filed a lawsuit before. kingston is one of the most bizarrely ethical companies on the face of the planet. they are truly weird; if you asked me to name one ethical company in the US, it would be kingston tech.
that $100 million thing is only the tip of the iceberg. kingston never fires any of its full employees. ever. the owners believe that once they have agreed to hire someone full-time, they are responsible for them until he/she retires.
in dealing with other businesses, kingston always does handshake deals. think about it, they are an international company; when was the last time you heard of anyone that big without any lawyers on their staff or even on retainer? their traditional approach to being cheated is to walk away and never do business with the other guys again. they are the classic pacifists; they would rather pay you off and never see you again that get drawn into a long stalemated court battle.
theyve been able to do that because in the industry kingston is the best. they do custom manufacturing jobs in under 24 hours. in the late 80s, they did jobs nobody else could touch- and they still have some of the best quality control. they might not be that big, but they have survived and done all right because they can do things nobody else can.
the moral to be drawn from all this is that if scott mcneely was trying to pick a pushover, he picked the wrong company. anyone else would probably weigh the relative costs and benefits; ie settle out of court. if you could get him really pissed, i dont think david sun would go for that. and kingston, if you look very carefully, is Kingston Technology COMPANY. it is not a corporation! there are no shareholders to be accountable to; no board of directors to second-guess the strategy of the executives.
the article does mention that kingston was sold (in fact it was to softbank, the same japanese company that owns zd and a lot of yahoo stock). what it doesnt mention is that softbank sold kingston back to its owners last year... there is some weird shit going on there, but essentially david sun (and co-founder john tu) have complete control of the company.
one final note: if mcneely played golf with david sun, david sun would kick his ass. kingston is a company notorious for the golf-playing of all their executives, and david sun is damn good.
this is not news. who cares about sun/kingston as linux has totally obliterated sun equipment in the datacenter. just walk into any exodus, globalcenter, or abovenet NOC and notice how 95% of the clientelle are using linux powered rackmounts.
The 5-15 is just what Sun would in theory make from the licensing from Kingston products. That isn't the goal -- the goal is to increase the demand for Sun's memory. My guess would be it's worth about 4 times whatever the royalties would be.
Sun offers McNeely a golf match to decide the lawsuit. How about a deathmatch or a masturbation contest or....a peeing contest
Gotta love big business and little boys
no sig.
I want what you're smoking. All of Sun's hardware is overpriced if you buy it from them. Priced any UltraSPARCs lately? Hell, a crappy 8-bit framebuffer from spares costs hundreds of dollars. There is no possible way for Sun to keep disk prices artificially high because you can use commodity disks direct from the manufacturer instead of the same disks with a Sun label on them. Sun RAM on the third-party market runs between $2 and $5 per MB, depending on whether it's new or used, and has for quite some time, including during the peecee RAM price spike a few months ago. While this still represents a nice margin for someone, that someone isn't Sun. This is hardly an outrageous price for high-speed ECC RAM.
The truth is, Sun's profits come from all their hardware, especially that purchased by people with also-outrageously-expensive service contracts who have no choice but to buy new equipment directly from them. This is true of pretty much every company that makes quality hardware.
Its time for a copyright heaven (tax heaven like)
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
i hope sun doesn't secretly own the patent on pouring hot bowls of grits down my pants. i'd owe them at least a bazillion in royalties if they did. thank you.
RSA is nothing more than a mathematical equation. These have already been defined as unpatentable, anymore than e=mc^2 is.
And that's why software patents by definition abuse the system. In the end, they're nothing more than mathematical equations, all of them. Specific writings thereof do reflect work, which is protectable by copyright. But you cannot patent an equation, and there are very good reasons for that. Why, then, the double-standard as applies to software?
Take their removable drives for instance.
Where I work company policy for desktops is to buy Dells (because they do a good job of tracking every part in every computer) and then modifying it by installing a Kingston drive bay. Does someone have a problem with their computer that will require trouble-shooting? Swap in a new drive, reboot, and debug the problem at leisure. Do you need to back up the computer? Pop the drive in a special machine with 2 bays, and ghost it in 15 minutes. (Drive to drive copying is a lot faster than anything you can do with a network.) Do you need to get back to an old configuration? Pop the drive in the same machine, run ghost, and wait 15 minutes. Keeping spare drives around is a lot cheaper than spare computers! (Easier to lug as well.)
If you want to maintain a standardized software set-up, Kingston drives are your friend!
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
...and Sun is no gnulix.
...signed, the ever-lovable gnulix guy!
In 3 lawsuits the existence of the Pohlig-Hellman algorithm was missed. To be sure, there is a good case against their patent. But the fact remains that the connection was not necessarily obvious.
In fact comments by the authors of the Pohlig-Hellman algorithm suggest that it was not. Go here and scroll down to "Martin Hellman". They were actively looking for a good public-key algorithm. They did not find it. They were experts who knew the field, clearly knew their own algorithm, were looking for something like RSA, but did not succeed in finding it. That alone qualifies as extremely good evidence that the idea was non-obvious at the time, no matter how obvious it appears in retrospect.
Simplicity of an idea has nothing to do with how patentable it is!
As for the fact that it is math, check the qualification I gave. If you consider anything in math or computers (by which I meant software) patentable, then RSA clearly should qualify. Whether or not an algorithm should be patentable is another - far more questionable - issue.
Cheers,
Ben
PS There was one thing that I was wrong on. The first public key algorithm predated RSA. However RSA is the first publically available public key algorithm that still stands. Here are some details. But the spooks apparently had it well before that.
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
For the benefits of the nations, or it's destruction, power is power, the law of the land... Those who don't fear death will die by their own hands.. Life is no ordeal if you become unnerved... Reject the system.. ...
Peace or Annihilation, it's your choice...
-- Java is not a Jedi trait... "do, or do not, there is no try" --
--Seen
"I used to be a dilettante. Then I thought I'd try something else for a while."
DH was the first public implementation of public key cryptography, *NOT* RSA, and it covered all the important stuff. (Source: Applied Cryptography)
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
You are right.
:-)
And it isn't often you get to correct me on anything related to math. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Cheers,
Ben
My usual seat in the cluetrain is at A HREF="http://pub4.ezboard.com/biwethey.ht
Enjoy your crack, dude. The elimination of Sun equipment, which is probably around 5% not 95% as you claim, has nothing to do with Linux and everything to do with the insane cost of Sun hardware. Despite the serious quality problems with peecees, the extra cost for real computers is hard to justify any more. The availability of Linux is at most a catalyst; most corporate Linux users would be enntee users if Linux did not exist. People aren't switching to peecees so they can run Linux; they're switching to peecees so IT costs don't eat them alive. If they just wanted to run Linux they could do so with the same Sun hardware they would otherwise have run Solaris on. It ain't happening, man. Linux may be better than Solaris, but that's got nothing to do with what's going on here, and your apples to paperclips comparison makes no sense: you're saying an OS has eliminated a (supposedly competing) hardware product. Eh?
I'm also having a real hard time with your terminology. What the f*ck has a datacenter got to do with a NOC??? Have you ever actually been to an example of either? I also find it hard to believe (but will offer no evidence and thus not claim as fact) that any sizable percentage of users have "linux-powered rackmounts." The rackmountable peecee is still a rarity, and an expensive one at that. If we're talking about rackmounted Alpha or SPARC systems, then you've defeated your own argument. If not, then I'm pretty damn sure you're just blowing smoke.
Their point about the "duty of candor" is important I think. I hope their countersuit is spectacularly successful, and inspires a rash of similar ones - maybe that would get this patent nonsense back under control, at least a little.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Don't want to be pedantic or anything but:
(You know - the people who make the after-market memory chips)
is really wrong: Kingston does not make chips. They only make memory modules.
And in fact, in this particular context that's quite important: the Sun patents are about the modules NOT the chips...
Breace.
Its has nothing to do with function, or even electronics! There are dozens and probably even hundreds of ornamentals designs of LIKE FOO FUNCTION.
I'm guessing an ornamental design could be made of any pre-existing patent. Like a ornamental design spin on the Butt Hinge with a facial of a CEO embossed on the head clasp. Use a barcode on the tail end so you can claim "with a computer".
Alas the patent library is littered with such ornaments. Not really inventions, but Mr. hankeys that just look different than someone elses, which most of us simply flush to make room for tomorrows "new technology".
Joe Torre - X - HardwareEngineer @ Amiga Inc & ZapMedia Amiga, AmigaDE, BeOS, Linuxz, QNX, Rebol, Windoze, ZME: So
BTW, Ben, I will enjoy it, thank you. :)
What I'm saying is that DH was the true revolution, that is, DH described the basic notion of Public Key Crypto, and RSA is just an implementation of it, and a rather annoying one, too (for secure calculation of keys over a public channel, it can be done, but not as convenient as DH, which had that built in).
DH also showed a method for generating keys, including the notion of using relative primes.
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
As I understand it this lawsute is basicly Sun suing Kingston for Kingston providing high quaity memory for Sun machines within Suns published specs.
What message is Sun sending out? "Don't support us".
This patent has value in making sure no one can make computers based on Suns technology. Reasonable enough.
However Sun in suing Kingston isn't doing anything to that ends. Instead Sun is preventing someone from providing support for Suns machines.
Amazon "Don't compeate with us"
Etoys "Don't even come near us.."
Microsoft "Don't use compeating products"
Sun "Don't support us..."
This is dumb..
You know if Sun asked Kingston politely I'm sure Kingston would galdly discontinue support for Suns machines. Wouldn't you?
I don't actually exist.
I wouldnt know but the loophole was obvious considering Kingston isnt publicly traded.
I patented trolling... pay up...
MRBILL ATE MY MEMORY! ALL 64MB OF IT!
Wonder how come this didn't make it to Slashdot (no, I didn't submit it, but strange that noone did?)
Sigged!
My reading of the article is that Sun and Kingston already have a licencing deal in place for the original Sun Patents. The issue is that Sun have since been granted further subsiduary patents and are saying that Kingston must licence these as well in order to continue to produce the modules.
I can't be certain but my understanding is that many of these are simply for applying standard practices in 32- and 64-bit memory modules to Sun's proprietory 128-bit modules. Kingston argue that the patents are not therefore non-obvious to a practitioner in the field of memory module design (and Sun did not disclose relevant prior art) so the patents are invalid.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
- SUN claims that their patents cover standard PC memory.
- SUN misled the USPTO by not disclosing prior art
However SUN's first patent (1991) is on a particular design and refers to previous patents on SIMMs the earlist of which is dated 6/1986.Apparently, Kingston originally licensed SUN's designs and it is the newer ones that they have not licensed.
I don't think this is quite so simple as some people are suggesting.
--GH
I agree, though I still feel there should be some form of automatic fine or increased fees for future patents for those who are discovered to have deliberately withheld prior art or otherwise attempted to pervert the process.
If the patent agent/attorney is found to have been knowingly involved then censure or even expulsion from the association should be actively considered.
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
Now the big argument..
So, if Gates is Morgoth, and (what's his name at Sun) is Sauron, then...
Linus is Aragorn (Linux being the latest in an ancient line of openness and UNIXness, unifying the two sides once again.)
But who gets to be Gandalf? I'd say that makes for a great ESR vs. RMS flamefest...
um...this is late, but did you read the article?
david sun has a higher handicap than scott mcneely.
to me, that by itself already implies david sun is a better golfer...