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Intel Must Pay $150M for Patent Infringement
An anonymous reader writes "ExtremeTech is reporting that a U.S. district court has ruled that Intel's Itanium infringes Intergraph's intellectual property to the tune of $150 million in damages. The judge also cleared the way for Intergraph to request an injunction blocking sales of Itaniums and Itanium 2's."
...must be throwing a party right about now.
What's that smell? Ah, that's my karma burning...
I just wanted to be the first to say that.
I know this doesn't really have anything to do with DRM, but it would be nice if it would at least slow it down.
But on a more relevant note, isn't this also taking patents a little too far? It sounds like they've patented a kind of technology that is virtually inevitable in the computing field. Could I run out and patent the idea of 128 bit parallel chip?
If we're going to fight IP abuse, it may actually be in our interest to support intel on this one. Unfortunately that would be helping a company at the forefront of DRM.
Oh the horror.. We may be screwed either way.
The article fails to mention any technical details concerning the patent, but it sounds as if it has something to do with Intel's EPIC (which basicly is VLIW).
I'd say that Intel will have to pay, because if Intergraph stops the Itanium series of processors, it will mean an even bigger loss of money, and perhaps give AMD time to get a market advantage with the Hammer.
See it here http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/27561.html
150 mil .. woo. That's alot of money, but i don't think it'll hurt intel all that much :P
YOU MUST PAY A $0 fine.
It seems that intel has learned a lesson the chinese already knew with regards to making sure you really own your ip portfolio.
Or it could be proof that even the best lawyers can occasionally miss something embarrassing in a patent search.
Intel no doubt has a lot of patents that it regards as valuable, so it won't support a proposal to do away with patents all together. But a proposal to reduce the "landmine" effect of unknown patents might win support in the technology industry, because landmine patents are a nightmare to everyone there.
So, how do you prevent landmine patents but still keep the basic concept of a patent? Maybe the time has come for a "sweat of the brow" basis for patents. At present patents are granted on the "lightbulb moment" theory: the inventor has a flash of inspiration and the invention springs fully formed from his brow. But this leads to silly stuff like the infamous XOR patent (which patented the use of XOR for screen cursors in GUIs). However the justification for patents lies in the investment required to bring an idea to market. So maybe patents should be granted based on evidence of the hard work required to generate the invention.
What do you think?
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
you missed the part that says The judge also cleared the way for Intergraph to request an injunction blocking sales of Itaniums and Itanium 2's.
Take a look at AMD's stock price now and compare it to 1999. Now look at intels. They both have went down but AMD lost a hell of alot more.
http://saveie6.com/
...at the reg: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/27561.html.
Anyways, it seems pretty clear that Intel will have to pay, which is another sad example of the poor state of the US patent system.
:wq!
From the FAQ...
Holy Shit! pwn3d! ...
Damn!
http://news.google.com/news?q=cluster:www.theregis ter.co.uk/content/3/27561.html
Me thinks some Intel geeks need alittle jail time like the rest of us would get.
150 million is a slap on the wrist to Intel.
Fabs are 2 billion plus, this is chump change to Intel.
Where is the RIAA when you need them (ala Napster)
That is insane news. Intel can't be happy about that. Makes me wonder if one of the reasons they delayed the Itanium release was because of this case being in court.
and what? you think bill gates is going to donate this money to intel?
bill gates doesn't own intel.
I'm not a particularly big fan of Intel. But I want 64 bit processing to take off. This only hinders that. I'm really goddamn tired of our litigous society.
Is Intergraph going to market a 64 bit chip for us? No. So why the hell do they feel the need to... bah. Nevermind. I can't go anywhere with this, it just gets me upset.
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
You moderators are all so predicatible. -1, Offtopic would be more apporpiate.
Here we have a typical case of the patent system working properly:
A smallish (relatively) company create an invention -- new hardware
A large company sees that, likes it, and decides to copy that invention
The smaller company sues for patent infringement, because hey, the big company didn't invent this
This is how things are supposed to work. Software patents are a completely different thing, but here we have a non-trivial hardware inovation that was patented and that patent was infringed upon. Please don't lump the two together under patent reform.
This is EXACTLY the sort of case that the patent system was set up to support. This is a GOOD example of patents working well. Intel infringed on the work of another individual, okay they claim they didn't know about it, but how much should we believe that a corporation like that didn't just think "Hell we've got the most lawyers".
Intel get zero sympathy from me here, too many big companies have played the lawyer card and won.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Have a look at the source of the patent claims:
Intergraph
It has extensive information about this lawsuit and a previous one, including legal docs, tech docs and some flash presentations for the technically impaired.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
I mean they used the same instruction set to input instructions and data, but by converting the x86 machine code into an internal machine code, they avoided directly implementing a x86 processor (although they did implement a translator) and thus (as a judge ruled, I recall) avoided patent infringment. Like I said, I wish I had an article to back this up.
In another matter how is it that the PIC is patentable? The article is plenty scant on technical details, but I got the impression that it was just a fancy term for pipelining, which has been around in supercomputers for 25-30 years. Does anyone out there know if PIC is some sort of new, exceptionally novell way of pipelining, or is it just another example of the patant office issuing a "you are the only one allowed to use this incredibly simple, obvious technique, that half the industry uses already."
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a big Intel fan, but still...
"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it." -George W. Bush
I think all this patenting should be dropped. First of all they should limit patenting to things that are really revolutionary. Secondly, having a patent should not be profitable. It would be just to get credits as being first.
Why? Because simply put.. If someone invents something and patents it, it's assumed like noone else is smart enough to invent the same thing. It's idiotic. Why not allow everyone to use all availbile knowledge? It would be a better world.. more competition, lower prices, newer technology. And there will not be any more pussies who do nothing just make an idea.
ILP, VLIW, EPIC or whatever it's called without processor or PC means NOTHING.
Cheque made payable to Intergraph for $149.99999...
Orginally a working model of the invention was one of the required submissions to the patent office. This caused something of a logistical problem and so the requirement was eventually dropped, but it shows that the writers of the original patent laws ( Jefferson primarily) understood the problems the current system faces.
"The Patent Act of 1790 (H.R. 41, introduced February 16, 1790, passed March 10, 1790) was crafted in part by Thomas Jefferson. As a result, it incorporated many of his beliefs including requirements for patents to have models submitted with all applications. Jefferson believed that ideas should not be patentable, rather patents should be issued only for physical inventions that have been reduced to practice."
http://www.m-cam.com/~watsonj/usptohistory.html
KFG
Other people comming up with the same idea, the main problem I have is with computed patents.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
When big companies get hit a few times like this corporate America will start to see the point that there's really no one who benefits from the patent system the way it is right now. But doing away with patents altogether won't find any takers, as someone's pointed out. Still, this is a good time to start a serious campaign for patent reform. Some checks and balances should be built in, along these lines:
-
Anyone about to release a product submits a description of it to the PTO; patent holders who think the product infringes on their patent has a month or 2 to file a complaint and prove the infringement. The onus of looking out for possible infringement lies enrtirely with the patent holder.
-
A patent holder can not be allowed to sit on a patent indefinitely and prevent others from using the invention. To this end, a patent holder must produce proof that s/he is working to commercially exploit his patent if s/he wants to hold on to it for more than (say) 10 years.
I'm not sure if these are practical to implement the way I've put them, but you get the idea.Of course I don't think anything of this sort will happen in the near future, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't fight.
Intel agrees to 72-hour deadline
r ch _6_2001.htm
technology firms aim to end free access to their goods
Intel, the chip making giant, has agreed to block patented CPUs from its site, following a fresh legal ruling.
A federal judge has given Intel 72 hours to block the processors containing patented "paralell instruction computing" technology.
The deadline operates from the moment anti-fun agents present Intel with lists of processors containing patented "paralell instruction computing" technology they want banned.
"Intel will follow the District Court's order," said Hank Barry, chief executive of Intel.
"Even before the court entered the order, we began making efforts to comply with what we believed to be the dictates of the Ninth Circuit's ruling," he added.
A spokeswoman for the Intergraph said lawyers for the trade group had received the long-awaited injunction late on Monday night in the US.
"I have never bought so much bloatware in my life since I started using Intel"
A Intel fan
The ruling is another victory for the anti-fun agents who have been in legal battle with Intel since December 1999.
They object to their CPUs being freely passed online in little static-charged plastic drug deal baggies between the 50 million Intel users.
"We are gratified the District Court acted so promptly in issuing its injunction requiring Intel to remove infringing works from its system," said Hilary Rosen, president of the Intergraph.
Dismayed fans
Fans of Intel, however, have expressed their dismay at the latest ruling.
"I don't know why people would believe for a second that the CPUs industry is losing money because of Intel," said one fan, using the name "Scorpio 65".
"I have never bought so much bloatware in my life since I started using Intel... I can promise I won't be buying as much bloatware if Intel shuts down, because I won't be able to load or run anything."
Fans also said they would be turning to other chip makers on the internet, such as AMD, Cyrix and Transmeta.
Identifying chips
However, Judge Marilyn Hall Patel also ruled that major CPUs producers must help Intel comply by making "a substantial effort" to identify chips that are being transmitted through the chip-swapping service.
Mr Barry added that court rejected the technology brokers's argument that Intel was inherently illegal.
He called for the technology brokers to share with Intel the burden of complying.
Although there are as yet no details of what punishment might be imposed if the deadline were missed, the most likely would see Intel forced to close down.
Nicholas Economides, an economics professor at New York University, said he sees the decision as "the beginning of the end for Intel, at least for Intel as a beacon of hope in the free world."
Industry doubts on filter
Intel said it had started blocking users from two million CPUs chips late on Sunday.
Industry sources said that amounted to barring only 1,000 or fewer patented processors containing patented "paralell instruction computing" technology on an online directory in which billions of such chips were traded monthly.
And some Intel users were reported to be already finding ways round the blocking mechanism.
On its website, Intel said the process of screening out chip names, clock speeds and L2 cache sizes would not be easy.
"It has involved a significant investment of time and resources," a statement said.
"However, we believe it is superior to shutting the service down and disbanding the community during the transition period to the new membership-based service."
Intel made its pledge to block access to patented material on Friday when it was in court fighting for its life.
anti-fun scepticism
Several major anti-fun agents had sued Intel for encouraging and facilitating patent infringements.
They had asked the judge to issue an injunction that would ban the service from operating unless it could block fargs of patented CPUs.
It was believed that this would effectively bring Intel's life to an end because the service had said it did not have the software to filter out such processors containing patented "paralell instruction computing" technology. Consequently, Intel's sudden promise was met with much scepticism.
"They've been telling the courts they can't do this. All of a sudden, they figured it out," said Robert Schwartz, a lawyer who has previously represented Warner Studios in similar cases.
Imminent injunction
Judge Patel had previously issued an injunction that would have effectively closed down Intel, but had been asked by a higher court to reconsider the case after Intel appealed against her decision.
"I've been stealing ram sticks like crazy"
Intel user
Intel wants to transform its website into a subscription service, where people pay to farg CPUs.
To make this a success, it needs to retain its loyal users, and this cannot be done if it closes down.
Widely watched
The legal battle with Intel is being closely watched because of its implications for CPUs, books, wheels, fire and other technology being distributed via the internet.
However, Intel's efforts appear to have won over at least one of its potential rivals.
Media and technology giant Vivendi Universal seemed to warm on Monday to the idea of joining Intel's planned subscription service with German media giant Bertelsmann, saying it could consider jumping on board over the next few months.
http://www.stern.nyu.edu/networks/quotes/BBC_Ma
I understand why you don't want to let just anybody build products on the back of the research done by a company's scientists. But this sounds to me like Intergraph were not honestly trying to prevent Intel from using their IP. In fact, I think they might structure their buisiness model around this sort of deal: Patent something you know a big company is going to need soon, wait until they've completely commited to it, and beat a few million out of them in court. Would anybody call this a legitimate revenue model?
One might even feel bad for Intel, as they seem to attract some pretty slimy parasites recently (none worse than Rambus). However, one must remind oneself about all the frivolous IP infringement suits they filed against AMD and VIA. Then, this looks like cumupets (sp?).
HP and Intel must be in serious pain - the Itanium has been a total flop.
Ahahahahahahaha Muahahahah
It's funny, it's a drop in the bucket One Hundred Fifty Million Dollars? Bagh, that's lunch money.
This is a familiar pattern.
A company that fails in the market resorts to intellectual property suits to tax successful companies.
Let's be clear here, Intel didn't steal Integraphs designs, but now everyone who purchases an Itanium CPU from Intel must subsidise Integraph who had no hand in designing or manufacturing them.
And it's a badass compiler. Seriously. icc is awesome.
IP patents lead to all sorts of problems. How different is different enough not to be sued? If I independently develop a similar, say, algorithm why shouldn't I be allowed to use it?
If I discover an optimal algorithm but then another makes the same discovery and patents it, how is this fair?
How can you tell the difference between an invention and a discovery? What if I use a different means to achieve the same specific end?
Sometimes when I think about pantent law, I say to myself, "Me, why does head feel like it being applied to sufficiently large cheese grater and vigorously shaken?" To which I answer, "You mindless grammar fiend! More brain washing for you!" and silenty look at the pretty blue colors at microsoft.com
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
I had this great idea, and thought of Patenting it, but in the interests of open source and free software, decided to publish it for free use. As far as I know, there is no prior art. :-)
VCR Clock SettingA reliable sign of the absence of technical knowledge is to see the flashing 12:00 of a VCR. It seems that manufacturers can't get their act together, to create a UI that the average Joe (or Joanne) can use to set the time in the VCR (or Microwave oven.)
My idea is to add a single button, replacing all those time setting menus. On this button, and also on a large sheet of card in several languages, would be written the words "Press the Time button at 12 noon." Of course, technicians can also be trained to do this for those who have trouble following instructions.
Share and Enjoy!
[Note to moderators: +1 Funny. It's humor.]Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
The point is that Intel is loaded and this was pocket change to them.
I bought the real thing when the free version showed 48% reduction in the execution time of my floating point intensive simulation program! Vectorizing, interprocedural optimization and Pentium specific optimization just blows GCC away.
ICC is a great example of how proprietary software sometimes can and often does outclass the free alternatives. The $500 investment has already paid itself back in saving my time and nerves.
Stock price means nothing except PERCEIVED value of a company. It only has something to do with reality in so far venture capitalists are able to distinguis between fact and fantasy (and we still remember the .com bust) ...
Did you know, that the wheel has been patented?
Innovation Patent #2001100012 granted by the Australian Patent Office.
/. Where the truth
And, from the USPTO itself: US 5794003 and US 5560028
And, for future reference: search the USPTO
...if Deep Fritz ran on a Beowulf cluster of patent-infringing Itaniums and Itanium2s?
Discussions such as this one are the result of the different views people have on the reasons we have patents. What is it the patent system actually tries to accomplish?
Stimulate research by allowing individuals and companies to reap the full benefits from their research, knowing that the competition will not be able to run off with the things they have laboured to invent. Patenting drugs is an example, they take considerable research and testing to develop, and their formulas should therefor be protected. However patenting gene sequences also fall under this category. Many people say that they should not be patentable, but it can be argued that they should, due to the large amount of effort involved in finding and exploiting interesting gene sequences.
Protect ideas, basically saying that if you think of something first, you have full rights to the idea. Something like the telephone, for which the technology already existed but no one had thought of this particular application yet, before Bell. Single-click buying and XOR cursor patents fall under this category as well though, patented by people who are simply the first to be faced with a trivial problem, and patent the obvious solution to that problem.
Foster innovation and competition in the marketplace, by giving startups the rights over their ideas and designs, they have the opportunity to develop their business without the competition taking their idea and crushing them. Individuals thinking up novelty items such as the "waving hand on a spring" would like their ideas protected, so that they can market and produce these items without large-scale Hong Kong and Chinese manufacturers taking their idea and flooding the market with 10 million units produced overnight. But Intel can use this as well, patenting the design for a CPU socket to lock out competition in a market they already dominate.
Which ever of these three reasons for patents you believe in (or any other reason for that matter), one can come up with both good and bad examples of patents that meet the criteria, ("Good" and "bad" being designations that most people would agree with in these cases).
In my opinion, the best solution might be to shorten patent life. If the purpose of patents is to encourage ideas to be published and used, yet allow the inventors to reap the benefits of their ideas and their work, then a shorter lifespan of patents would work well... how long does it generally take for a company to recoup monies invested in research anyway? If I have a good idea but I lack the means to develop it in the near future, is the public not better off if another company is allowed to use my idea after the patent lapses after a few years, instead of allowing me to sit on it for ages, perhaps hoping some company will discover the same idea and then spring my patent on them? I would suggest a patent lifespan of no more than a few years... but perhaps others can come up with reasons longer lifespans would be a necessity.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Because it's worth a lot, at least $150M, that's why.
unfinished: (adj.)
The more big companies feel the pain caused by over-reaching IP claims, the faster the day will come that our "representatives" will be forced to rationalize these laws.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Patent laws are tricky.
But the people who thought them up are smart.
The people who work with them are even smarter.
And believe me, they're so complicated that you silly boys can't possibly understand how complicated they are.
Oh, by the way, I make a lot of money with the patent system the way it is, so don't get any stupid ideas.
I just saved you 5 minutes of your life.
You're welcome.
Swan is the inventor of the light bulb.
He knew exactly what problems had to be solved to produce a long lasting eclectic light.
1: a decent vacuum pump (invented by the Edison team)
2: a decent filament, Swan waited until synthetic fibres could be used, Edison tried anything and everything.
Knowing how to make A light bulb is trivial, finding the raw materials isn't.
Other examples are things like peniciline, peniciline was quashed by patents because there was no current fermentation process to produce large quantities of peniciline until it was patented.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Eemck ,( E=mc2 ) , you cant patient that. You need an invention. ..
But all I split was a Tasmanian beer atom
Maybe you can get some compensation out of Jamal.
I'm going to patent 256 bit, 512 bit, 1024 bit
Muhahahahahahahahahaaaaa
I'm gonna be rich!!! Wanna be my lawyer Johnnie Cochran???
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Is that the same Intergraph that used to make high end 3D workstations?
Perhaps they still do, I've been out of the 3D world for a few years now - but I never really thought they had any of their own technology, just cool cases and fast hardware (other people's hardware), and solid video cards.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
Am I the only one that thinks that if Intel can't sell their crappy little Itaniums then they'll be forced into quick development on Yamhill? At least Intel's current offering isn't IMHO direct competition for AMD, but if the rumors are correct, and they have a development team on Yamhill already, then plan B is now the only plan they have.
Living near and knowing several who work at Huntsville's Intergraph facility, and knowing the lawyers involved in defending Intel locally, let me just say...
Oh yeah! Suck it baby! Woo Hoo!
There is a big difference with genetics. Genes already exist in nature. The people who are patenting genes are FINDING them, not INVENTING the. The result is that they are using the patent to prevent other people from performing research on naturally occuring bio functions.
Simply having a lot of work and money involved in something does not justify enabling patents on it. You are still FINDING something that already existed. The patent system is for developing something that does not already exist.
One group patented genes that they thought were related to breast cancer. Then they prevented other groups from researching various cures for breast cancer. THAT SUCKS.
If someone developes a gene sequence from nothing, let them patent it. But if they just find an existing sequence in nature, then it should qualify as prior art and prevent the patent.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
I just unloaded my Intergraph stock a month ago.
Oh well. I used to work in Intergraph's advanced processor division a couple a years ago. There was this designer that laid out the clipper cache for the C3/C4 processor. Well he got grabbed up by intel a few years later. Word had it, he designed part of the pent/intn cache.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
Pending the final outcome of this patent infringement case, I wonder how this will affect AMD and its *hammer chip uptake in the higher-end 64-bit x86 architecture market. Should Intel lose the case, does any of this have the potential to help AMD increase market share in the 64-bit arena, whether by virtue of being a pure, innovative technology (as opposed to being ripped from someone else), or by having an advantage of already being on the market while Intel redesigns their chips? Or by having cheaper chips (by not having to tack a litigation 'tax' onto the price of processors)?
Does any of this even matter? Will AMD still be the Cinderella in the corporate eyes when this is over?
Have EVDO, will travel.
Considering that their Itanium is mostly a drain on their resources, maybe this ruling will kill it completely and leave Intel to develop something more interesting.
If anything, Intel would have released it sooner, to build up OEM demand for it, and thus allies to help them argue against an injunction. As it is, Intel will have a hard time getting people to care, when OEMs are happy to continue using Xeons.
4 years is a long time for a lot of software. Let's take Windows 98 as an example. Within 4 years after it came out, MS released Windows 98 Second Edition, Windows ME, Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
Granted, there's still people running Win95 and even MS/DOS with Win 3.1 but most people consider Win98 to be obsolete. Why should a patent outlive the usefulness of that which it protects? (hardware is the same way in my opinion.. a lot of companies have a 2-3 year rotation plan for replacing hardware)
Now, let's look at another example..
My name is Homer Simpson and I patent a chair with another set of legs to keep me from bonking my head when I lean back too far. I would guess the lifespan on that invention to be considerably greater than 4 years.
see the problem?
Too bad this patent doesn't keep people from reinventing it.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Besides that this guy likes 64 bit processing, what is the point? He is angry/upset?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In pharmacuticals this approach is feasible. A medical patent would have to mention both the disease and the treatment, and both of these have fairly well defined keywords to describe them.
At the other extreme, software patents are essentially unsearchable. A patentable idea can often be expressed in a few lines of code, so a 100,000 line program has many thousands of ideas in it, any one of which might already be patented. Worse yet there is no system for categorising and naming these ideas, so if I want to do a patent search on even one of these ideas I have only the vaguest guess as to what keywords to look for.
So the only thing to do is to put your product on the market and pray that someone doesn't pop up and say "You stepped on my patent: cease and desist selling your product immediately".
Intel faces a very similar problem: just substitute "simple logic circuits" for "lines of code" in the above. In fact chip designers these days do actually design chips in a programming language called VHDL, so the cases are exactly parallel.
Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
OK, the parent post is at present -1, Troll, but that makes it +1, Funny.
But if it gets modded as +1, Funny, then it's no longer Funny, but merely a troll . . .
. . . but if it's a TROLL it's actually really Funny . . . I mean, a troll, erm
whatever . . .
This may be a little offtopic but as people is again discussing the merits of the modern patent system I would highly recomend this link from Scientific American:
There's No Stopping Them
Well SciAm is a highly respectable publication which seems to have some good years of life. So I think we may take into consideration that if even perpetual motion engines keep being patented, anything can be patented, even the Creation or the Big Bang... Besides, in the article they give some interesting reason why we have so many silly patents and why we have so many troubles with courts. While this is not exactly about this patent we are discussing here, it gives some light on the state of the things.
Well it's a shame he didn't take a patent out on 1984?
Someone who patents an idea, shall document how much they spent (labour, materials, etc ). Add to that a standard 30% profit.
Everybody can use the patented idea, by paying a share of that cost. More people/companies use the idea, less they have to pay. Once the costs are payed, the idea goes into public domain and is free.
Ciao
----
FB
Funny thing that they get a judgement against them, yet their stock goes up...
But in the long run, AMD may be able to proceed ahead with better, faster processors while Intel is still trying to work on a replacement for Itanium (if the injunction goes for blocking sales).
They may take a stock hit, but progress technology-wise they may be able to get put more of a dent on Intel's bandwagon.
Those who go for AMD usually stay with AMD - phorm
An abnormally bad flu season probably costs Intel this much.
The merits of the entire patent system is being determined by bogus devices that will continue to yield occasional patents?.
Please, I hope I am not being imposing by providing a bit more of a substantial view on the merits of our patent system:
Remarks from Judge Pauline Newman, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, Ph.D. in chemistry from Yale:
link
The Federal Circuit arose from the broad policy study of industrial innovation, as some of the speakers have already mentioned this afternoon, in 1978 President Carter's domestic policy review of industrial innovation. It was a time of serious industrial stagnation. The Federal Circuit was formed as a dramatic move for the purpose of adding stability to the patent law. It was the first change in judicial structure in over a hundred years, perhaps the last 10 for another hundred. Let me tell you something about our court. Patent cases are about a quarter of our case load.....
Patents are directed at innovation. That's their purpose, and of course they affect competition. That's how they work. That's the only way they work....
The patent system serves to encourage the start of this lengthy and expensive and risk-laden process. Unless the process of innovation is successfully completed, the patent is of no value. I shouldn't say no value. The knowledge it discloses can be of enormous value. But one of my first assignments as an industrial scientist was to review the technological history of synthetic rubber, and I did easily find about 150 detailed scientific references. Every single one was in the patent literature. None existed elsewhere. In virtually all fields of technology today as well, patents are the major if not the only source of technical information.....
Patents cover only things that are new, things that were unknown before the patentee discovered them and disclosed them. The technologies have driven the economy since the Industrial Revolution have all invoked the commercial incentive of patents. There are, I'm told, no exceptions, from the cotton gin to the electric light, the airplane.
As soon as the inventor showed the way, the entrepreneurial spirits of the nation took hold, and the copiers appeared, and litigation ensued. All the major patents have been through the courts. The economic role of patents was studied as well as it might be at the time of the formation of the Federal Circuit court. You may recall that in the late 1970s, the economy of the nation was at a low point. Investment in basic science and in applied research had disappeared. There were mass layoffs of scientists and engineers. I recall the revolution in the American Chemical Society to try to somehow adjust or interact with what was happening to scientists who had studied and were jobless. Our production in the United States was no longer competitive. Old technologies were stagnant. New ones were dormant, and the balance of trade had turned negative for the first time perhaps in our national history. Only technology-based industry made a positive contribution, and there was concern, real concern, that national policies were not attuned to the needs of this industry, that we had created disincentives to industrial innovation. I was a member of this Domestic Policy Review in the Carter Administration, and I recall talking and thinking about the conclusions, and the conclusion that didn't take much to know, that a diminished patent incentive had evolved in the United States. Chairman Pitofsky mentioned some of the 1970 procedures and guidelines that were being followed. It was clear that antitrust policy as well as judicial attitudes were providing disincentives to technological industry, and the economic consequences were quite apparent, and they led to some major policy changes, new examination practices in the patent office. The Reexamination Statute came out of that study, formation of the Federal Circuit and changes in competition policy, changes still pretty much present. In 1981, a spokesman for the patent section of the Antitrust Division, Roger Anderwell, summarized the economic premises for the policy changes. He said that companies that invest heavily in the research and development of new technologies have about three times the growth rate, twice the productivity rate, nine times the employment growth, and only one-sixth the price increases as companies with relatively low investments in R&D....
The creation of our court was a major step that was taken as part of the design to restore the statutory and indeed the constitutional role of intellectual property.....
The common thread, the fundamental theme of patents is that the prospect of a commercial advantage is an effective incentive, effective enough to meet our national economic goals, and that reducing that prospect reduces the incentive.........
I see the strength of the patent system drawn from the principles of property. The securing of property, as one discovers, this is the word that the Constitution uses, to secure the right, was viewed as the securing of a natural right. It's interesting to me to compare Jefferson's view of patents as primarily an instrument of fairness with Madison's view as an incentive to commercial enterprise, but both of these accord with a powerful view, the powerful belief of the framers in the sanctity of property. And it's these property rights, as I see it, that are the foundation, the economic foundation of the innovation incentives that are built on technology. I have yet to come upon an improvement in the simplicity and effectiveness of the principle that legally protected exclusivity for a limited time in exchange for the disclosure of the new knowledge is an incentive, an effective incentive to innovation.
... AMD announces the acquisition of Intergraph for $400M. :-)
That is all.
If something is fundamental to anything, how does society benefit by licensing a monopoly to anyone?
Thank. You.
Ummm...that was less than 20 seconds, it seems, so let me elaborate - that was the only informed post I've ever seen, by someone who has had experience with more than the "inventing" aspect of patents. While I think there's a need for patent reform in some areas, your post should be a reference point for anyone who thinks we should throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Last post!
Intel and Intergraph have already worked out deals to licence the technology. There is a seperate negotiated price for the various continencies:
Intel loosed case and appeal = $X
Intel looses case but wins appear =$Y (YX)
Intel wins case = $Z (ZYX)
$100 mil is chump change. It does not do intergraph any dood to kill Itanium.
The problem is you can patent something you can not build. Right now big tech companies are patenting quantum and organic science stuff which they are no where close to building, but are mainly doing it for insurance.
What really sucks is a lot of the patents are just tech versions of the works of academia and scientists. It's like QM predicts the concept of superposition, so I'll patent the use of superpositions for computers. Very similar to the patents for doing auctions "on a computer".
I think you should not be able to patent it unless the technology to make it useful already exists. There should also be a 6 month window, in which if somebody else submit's a similar patent, both patents holders have equal licensing rights. This will minimize the patents for using old/ancient concepts on new technology.
Wow. You mean like Rambus? Apparently you must don little Rambus pom-poms and a sultry little cheerleader skirt when you discuss them, huh? They near and dear to your heart?
Anyone seen the just-granted patent on a "house-cleaning robot"? I think it was assigned to Procter and Gamble... Talk about patenting an obvious idea - and yes, I read the claims, and THEY were all obvious.
if you think 1999 was a good metric for level-headed decisions in tech stocks, there's some land in florida i'd like to tell you about. don't you remember rhat? they had jumped to $120+ in the first three months then dropped to $15 in the first quarter of 2000. or lnux? they maxed out on their opening day ipo at $320 a share. now they're at 80 cents. it's all perceived value (and retards with way too much money on their hands).
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
an injunction blocking sales of Itaniums and Itanium 2's
New and improved name! Unobtanium!
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
As an upside all those old cartoons showing people holding models in the waiting room at the patent office would make sense again ....
Seriously though I beleive that all patents should pass the "Edison test" - basicly is it such a revolutionary idea that you think Mr Edison would have been proud of it. You should be able to patent revolutions, not incremental improvements
That's how you normally deal with patents. You buy the patent, or just buy the entire company. It's intel's own fault for bungling this one, I wouldn't feel sorry for them at all.
Intel plays the patent game too, so this isn't a case of victumization. Although I'm sure this is one of the biggest screw-ups at intel in a long time.
It is very important that you support the eurolinux petition against swpatents. http://www.eurolinux.org Just because patents work like a public granted exploitation by accident...
How is this related to Intel??
The only thing interesting about this post is this guy's creative grammar. I can't even tell what side of the issue he's on, and I've reread this thing four times!
So at the end, it stiffles promotes innovation, but depromotes implementations/applications, and breaks the techonolical advance foundations which is built layer upon layer.
What the fuck does this mean!? Arrgh! How does something this completely nonsensical get modded up? Am I missing some Meandering Brain Dump to English conversion software that everyone else has access to?
ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO-YOU-SPEAK-IT?
The idea for EPIC came from HP, long before said Intergraph patent. HP then entered a joint venture with Intel and shared the technology. I think HP can claim prior art here and make this patent issue a moot point. They had developed specialized parallel processors years ago for plotting devices, and this in turn lead to PA-WideWord, renamed IA64 by the marketroids.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
I fail to see how Itanium could have caused anybody other than Intel that much damage. The thing has already cost them untold millions and how many have they sold? A few thousand? How many people do you know that have one of these. There must be a reason it's called the Itanic inside of Intel.
Let's not forget that EPIC was originally an HP design. In the late 80's HP had some projects that were using custom parallel processors for a new line of plotters. This idea carried over into it's CPU research under the name "PA-WideWord". Eventually the technology was shared with Intel for the joint venture IA64 project. If Intel's lawyers would look down that road they would be able to claim prior art for Intel and make the patent a moot point.
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
Last year we drove across the country... We switched on the driving...
every half mile. We had one cassette tape to listen to on the entire trip.
I don't remember what it was.
-- Steven Wright
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