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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."
See it here http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/3/27561.html
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.)
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.