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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."
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.
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.
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.
The time of an expert is more valuable than the time of a novice.
-Kevin
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?).
Many patent ideas are novel and not at all obvious results of a fixed amount of research. Even an expert may never come up with these ideas in a lifetime. In other words, the value of a patent doesn't correlate with the time it took an inventor to develop the idea. You can't assume that you could plug in another expert like a lightbulb and have invented TV or relativity or whatever.
-Kevin
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.
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) ...
You do realise that 64-bit workstations have been around for many years, and they didn't come from intel? Like this and this. They're pretty affordable too.
Stick Men
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...
The theory of patents is that you would not be able to think of it by yourself. If you consider that, patents make sense, since by patenting something the patent holder gets exclusive right to the idea for a certain time in exchange for him disclosing the idea to the public. You both gain, you get access to an idea you otherwise wouldnt have access to, and he gets paid for telling the world rather than having to keep it secret and hope nobody figures out how he did it.
Of course it doesnt work in practice since the patent office grants patents for 'inventions' that a bunch of shaved monkeys with typewriters could create in hours.
If there is a likelyhood that someone else will independently invent the same thing within the lifetime of the patent it just shouldnt be granted.
Unfortunately the calendar only could be set once a year. :)
My neighbor's
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
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.
The idiots that "play the market" always dump AMD too when Intel stock dives, 'cause Intel is A "bellweather" for the market. So no party.
Yes, you're right. A US patent can have a real economic effect if a manufacturer wants to sell in the States. This is particularly so as the US is very good value in terms of patenting costs - this metric takes into account population, GDP, government costs, deterrence, enforcement costs etc. This makes it a good export target country where IP rights are effective.
I guess I was really talking about legal effect as it is pretty common to see US patents discussed as if they were International.
Having said that, in most of my work, the US has been one of many export targets and I'm not sure the presence of a competing patent or the inability to file for patent protection meant the end of any company I know of. It could happen though.
The US is not always the biggest single market for some types of technology. But it can have a knock on effect because of its IP law. The best example of this was when the US (and Canada) had "first to invent" rather than first to file. This gave legal priority to US applicants who were the first to invent something, whereas
nearly every other country works on a first to file system.
By contrast, the US does have the concept of Small Entity giving cheaper govt fees for small organisations. The World Industrial Property Organisation has this too for PCT applications made by patent applicants from developing nations.
I'm not sure the US has a statutory compulsory license regime for patents. Given the policy of generally stronger inventor rights in the US, perhaps it doesn't. But the US DOJ and the courts can force a patent owner to license their patents. An example of this is the compulsory license enforced on 3D Systems Corp and DTM Corp. Interestingly this was to "preserve competition and promote innovation by allowing a firm presently competing abroad to enter the U.S. market." So it seems it's not all bad news for foreign companies. Usually it reduces to a policy call. After all, patents are inherently monopolistic - the hard thing is getting the balance right.
An abnormally bad flu season probably costs Intel this much.