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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."
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
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/
From the FAQ...
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]
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
And, from the USPTO itself: US 5794003 and US 5560028
And, for future reference: search the USPTO
I'm sorry but I have to say any attempts of patent reform out of these forums are doomed to fail. Utterly.
(BTW, I'm not directing my followup at the previous post either... just at patent reform posts here in general).
The level of ignorance of intellectual property law displayed is most slashdot discussions is roughly that of a newbie wanting to sue someone because his or her linux installation was too hard for them.
Cruel but fair.
Apart from disagreements based on a political or economic stance (hey, anyone's entitled to an opinion), it is clear that many people posting patent reform proposals have utterly no clue about what a patent is, how to read one, what can be protected by a patent and what are the criteria for patenting.
The signal to noise ratio on this topic is vanishingly small which is no excuse given that there are many excellent web-based resources which might help people learn a bit about IP law.
As a really rough guide before commenting on *any* patent infringement case, here are a few rules...
1. READ THE PATENT. For US patents the full text and figures are available on www.uspto.gov. For European and many other countries check out http://ep.espacenet.com (which brings me to rule 2...)
2. Patents are jurisdictional. Yes, other countries have patent systems which may or may not be identical to the US system. In fact, the US has some quite strange wrinkles compared with other places. Also, a US patent has NO legal effect outside the US (other than as prior art - like any other document...).
2. READ THE CLAIMS. If I had a dollar for every time I'd read a spittle-flecked indignant post about someone 'patenting' something when it is clear the author of the post has only read the title or the abstract.... The legal coverage is in the claims - these are the numbered clauses at the end of the patent. This probably accounts for 80% of indignant anti-patent posts. Someone hears about a patent and posts something along the lines of "they patented X???!?!! hey what about if I patented Y!!!". It's a no brainer. Read them. For example, the RIM Blackberry patent sounds scary but the reality is the claims look too narrow, include weird limitations and seem to read on lots of prior art. But this didn't stop many hysterical posts demanding patent reform. Otoh, there is the xerox 'graffiti' patent which I'm sure Palm Inc have found very interesting.
4. Realise that the simple fact of a patent existing is NO judgement on the value of the technology. Anyone is free to try and patent the dumbest things they want to. Who is to judge their idea? Not me, not you and certainly not anyone in the US (or any other) government. Child swing patents big deal - perhaps it was a "baby examiner". There are lots of silly patents out there. They make amusing reading. All they prove is that someone spent money on them and managed to convince a patent examiner that it was new and inventive.
5. If something annoys you about the patent system, do some research to find out if there is in fact a problem. For example the previous poster is concerned about people sitting on patents and not working them. Well, many countries have what are called compulsory licenses which cover situations where a patent isn't worked. Structures vary, but a quick bit of research should have revealed this legal mechanism.
If you follow those rules, you should be able to at least contribute something useful in that hazy zone in where technology, law and economics overlap. Otherwise, you can look very foolish. No-one would expect to post on slashdot with inane comments on technology and not expect to be corrected.
There it is.
(By the way, yes, I am a patent attorney (not in the US). So of course I have a vested interested in the patent system. It's just impossible to discuss patent reform if the contributors known nothing about the system itself.)
I'd be very surprised if they had no knowledge of the technology.
Have EVDO, will travel.
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?
Bzzzz, thank you for playing.
One of Intergraph's major businesses is 3D industrial design--currently software, but in the past, also hardware (3d accelerators, custom designed workstations, etc) which is where this patent came from.
There business model is CERTAINLY not composed of "suing intel."
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Integraph has been working with Intel for a very long time. It was Integraph in fact that helped develop MMX which was the first time that Intel added multi-media extensions to a chip. There was a legal suit related to that as well, but Integraph continued to work with Intel supporing multi-media chip support, in order to have a stable and superior chip for it's NT workstations (the Z series).
I state the above because, while it is true that a developer may have naturally come up with the ideas, it should be noted that they had access to the intellectual efforts of Integraph. In short, I agree that this is a case of the patent system working to protect the inventor/innovator.
--- I'll have a Bloody Mary, a Steak Sandwich and a uh Steak Sandwich.
No, no, no! You might try reading up on this case a little before you rant about how Intergraph is trying to tax successful companies and hurting the consumers. Let's see what Intergraph says on the matter.
Intergraph claims that after several years of mutually beneficial work, in 1996 Intel began making unreasonable demands for royalty-free rights to Intergraph patents already being used in Intel microprocessors. When Intergraph refused, Intel abused its monopoly power by engaging in a series of illegal coercive actions intended to force Intergraph to give Intel access to the patents.
Clearly Intergraph and Intel actually did work together in the past. This is not a case where Intergraph patented lots and lots of processor-related ideas in the hopes that some bigger company would unknowingly implement them, whereupon they would smack them with lawsuit. The patents in question were not submarine patents.
Why take Intergraph's word for it? Well, look at the chronology of events. Intel tells Intergraph "we like your designs, give us royalty-free access to the patents." Intergraph refuses. Intel implements them anyhow. Intergraph sues. Intel asks the judge to dismiss the lawsuit, claiming it is obvious that Intergraph gave them access to the patents. The judge sides with Intergraph and rejects Intel's argument that they had a license for implementing those patents.
At no point did Intel try to show prior art. At no point has Intel claimed that the patents were trivial and should not have been granted. On the contrary, Intel fully understood the usefulness of the patents and implemented them in its newer processors. The only thing they had a problem with was paying royalties to Intergraph. They decided that they could get away with not doing so, that they were a bigger company and could throw their weight around and force Intergraph to concede.
Moreover, Intergraph also sued Intel under the provisions of the Sherman Antitrust Act for acting like a monopoly. Thus far that particular legal approach has amounted to very little, because the courts have said that Intergraph is not a direct competitor with Intel and is thus unable to sue under antitrust laws, but that does not change the point that the courts saw very real merit in Intergraph's allegations of abuse of monopoly power.
Why is it that one monopoly (Microsoft) is execrated whenever it engages in predatory business practices, but when Intel does something equally bullying and unfair, people decry Intergraph for picking on Intel?
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?
You cannot patent an idea, only the implementation of an idea. Further, it must be non-obvious to a practitioner in the field, and of course it must be original. An example would be that you could patent your design for a sprocket wrangling machine, but if someone else came up with a different way to wrangle sprockets they would be unaffected by your patent - the fact that they both produced wrangled sprockets is irrelevant.
You could patent a new chip fabrication technique, and you could patent a specific design for a 128-bit chip. But any chip that's 2^n bits would be obvious to a practitioner, and only an idea, so no.
They used to make high-end unix-based workstations for CAD/GIS work. The US Army Corps of Engineers and several other government agencies, as well as civil & construction engineering companies were huge customers. Demand for those workstations started to decline as PC's got more powerful and other software, like AutoCAD and ARC/INFO started to become more popular. Now, I believe, they are basically a software company. Their software is still very popular in public works & civil engineering firms. The last time I had any dealings with them was about 6 years or so ago when I went with some engineers to the Intergraph headquarters in Huntsville to help test some utilities for interfacing Microstation and ARC/INFO.