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Intergraph Injunction Against Intel Suspended For Now

Posted by timothy on from the talking-real-money dept.

Kilbasar writes "News.com is reporting that the Itanic has hit another iceberg, with a District Court granting an injunction stopping Intel from making the chip. However, the injunction was immediately suspended to allow for another round of appeals, and I don't really see anything coming of this other than Intel paying Intergraph anywhere from $100M to $250M to use their patents."

34 of 130 comments (clear)

  1. the price by flyingember · · Score: 3, Informative

    http://online.wsj.com/article_email/0,,SB103601301 9593598031,00.html I believe it's $150mill minimum

  2. I can picture it now.... by cyberise · · Score: 5, Funny

    .....the AMD execs are probably all grinning and giggling like schoolgirls.

    1. Re:I can picture it now.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah, until they get hit by the iceberg.

    2. Re:I can picture it now.... by packeteer · · Score: 3, Funny

      Or untill they hit the iceburg. I can see it now "Mayden Voyage of the Clawhammer CPU crashes into Itanic".

      --
      unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
    3. Re:I can picture it now.... by inburito · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Might not work like that. Stock markets are notorius for not following common sense. A more likely scenario is that if a major player in a certain sector is doing bad most likely all of the stocks in that sector are going to suffer.

      A good example would be nokia-ericson parallels. Even though nokia is consistently making a profit and even beating the market estimates its stock gets pounded by bad news coming from a mismanaged swedish mobile phone manufacturer. So when someones misfortune should be someone elses fortune it just ends up being a misery for everyone (at least stockholders).

  3. Too bad by madsenj37 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Intel is not the only chip manufacturer out there. AMD with its clawhammer is looking to be a better option anyway. Its just too bad teh general public doesnt know this. The same goes for Microsoft. Other alternatives are availible but alas Joe consumer just uses what everyone else does.

    --
    Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
    1. Re:Too bad by GuyMannDude · · Score: 5, Funny

      Intel is not the only chip manufacturer out there. AMD with its clawhammer is looking to be a better option anyway. Its just too bad teh general public doesnt know this.

      Yeah, if you're AMD you have to envy Intel's marketing campaign. Nothing says "massive computer power" like a bunch of bald idiots covered in blue bodypaint dancing around like jackasses.

      GMD

      --
      watch this
    2. Re:Too bad by Kallahar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, most people buy and use what TV tells them to. Unfortunately, that leaks into corporate practice too. Every AMD I've used has been rock solid, but management won't let us use them anywhere because they have that concept that they Must Use Intel.

      Travis

  4. My that's rich! by L.+VeGas · · Score: 3, Funny

    "the Itanic has hit another iceberg"

    What a wit!
    'Course I'm only half right.

    --
    Best Windows Freeware
    1. Re:My that's rich! by kzinti · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, McNealy's use predates McGee's.

      But I'm not saying that McNealy invented the expression - just that he's made it his own. Just like Barry Switzer didn't invent the wishbone offense; he just borrowed it and used to run over Nebraska and Texas for fifteen years or so.

      --Jim

  5. Just curious... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... but does anybody know if Intergraph actually uses their patents to make chips? It seems rather silly if they don't develop anything themselves... Just my anonymous opinion however

    1. Re:Just curious... by rfreynol · · Score: 3, Informative

      Intergraph used to make its own chips - the CLIPPER line that they used in its workstations. They went to Intel based workstations back in the early ninties and have sold off most of their HW business. The problem with hardware is that the margin is small enough as it is, but Intergraph insisted on making it all in the US, not in Tawian like most.

    2. Re:Just curious... by cant_get_a_good_nick · · Score: 5, Informative

      They used to. They used to make a range of workstations, using a chip called the Clipper (no relation to the encryption chip). It got killed in the volume economics of Intel. Intergraph then started with a range of Intel workstations, and that business crashed and died, which Intergraph states was due in large part to Intel refusing engineering support in order to coerce them to hand over patent rights. Then they started suing. Intergraph has a long history of litigation with Intel. Been going on and off since 1997, this is just another round of "been there, done that".

  6. As I understand this... by Bobulusman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Intel is already out $150 million. If they win the appeal, no more lost money. If they lose, they lose another $100 million. Either way they get permission to use the patent. There's really no reason for them not to pursue this.

    --
    Cogito ergo sum in Slashdot.
  7. What does this mean? by airrage · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In some ways I'm hoping that this doesn't affect me as both a corporate IT person, and an avid computer geek, but alas, I think it is not so. The chips adhere to the law of spoilage; that if not brought to the marketplace before a certain time, they will actually be sold for a loss. I like the plantiff's position in this, in that they simply just need to wait it out while the fruit rots on the loading dock. I'm not a legal scholar, but what is all this hedging in the suit: I appeal, but lose 100 million, I win, lose the 100 million, you win, the 100 million, plus appeal money, but possibly lose ... oh I can't keep up..

    --
    "This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
  8. Not Suspended.. by mnmn · · Score: 4, Funny

    Please note the injunction has been Suspened not Suspended. This new verb might not mean its closely sounding couterpart, so we cannot assume the injunction has been Suspended.

    Here's dictionary.com's take on this new word, and Merriam-Webster's take on it is to blurt out "The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the Dictionary search box to the right."

    As a side note, statistics say most new words are borne out of careless spelling mistakes.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
    1. Re:Not Suspended.. by br0ck · · Score: 4, Funny

      I propose a new rule that if a misspelling has more than 2000 hits, then it should be officially declared good enough for Slashdot. ;)

  9. I will never understand the court decisions by jukal · · Score: 5, Insightful
    The companies further agreed that Intel would pay Intergraph an additional $100 million if it filed and lost an appeal... If Intel wins the appeal, it won't get the $150 million back, but it won't have to pay Intergraph any more fees and won't be barred from shipping Itanium chips.

    Ok. So I get sued by someone for stealing his non-flushable-toilet idea (which is great concept), and he wins the first round in the court and I am ordered to pay him $42 million dollars. So, I make an appeal, which I win. They decide I did not do anything wrong after all. By this appeal I won't get anything back, but I won't have to pay anything more either. By suing me, the inventor got $42 million for nothing?

    1. Re:I will never understand the court decisions by jukal · · Score: 3, Informative
      Agreed... as in mutually came to a deal....

      Yeah, I guess that's how it went. But imagine the potential extra costs Intel must have feared when they decided to sacrifice the $150 million to reach the agreement. It would be nice to know which extra ace Intergraph had in their pocket during the discussions.

    2. Re:I will never understand the court decisions by Dun+Malg · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If the companies believe they can make wiser decisions outside the court, why do they go inside the court?

      Well, in order to get to the part of the process where they sit down and hammer out an agreement, they have to go through the legal system equivalent of a game of chicken.
      Intergraph says "I'm better than you" (you used our IP without paying)
      Intel says back "No you're not" (no we didn't).
      Intergraph retorts "Oh yeah? I'll prove it--I challenge you to a game of chicken" (We'll see you in court)
      Intel: "Fine!" (Fine!)
      Then, as the cars speed towards each other head on (as the court case progresses), Intel thinks that Intergraph isn't going to swerve out of the way first (has evidence to back up its claim), so they jerk the steering wheel to the side and chicken out (agree to some sort of non-judicial arbitration).
      Driving head-on at one another is an important part of the legal system. It is the most costly of all the various means of proving whose wiener is bigger, but could very well end up with both parties wrecking their cars or dying. But since it's the only means of redress Intergraph can force Intel to participate in, it was invoked as its last resort. Basically, Intel wasn't going to give Intergraph a dime voluntarily unless their other option was limited to giving it to them involuntarily.

      Personally, I think the CEO's of each company should be forced to play an actual game of chicken to decide the case. It might be a bit arbitrary, but the entertainment value would make up for that.

      --
      If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
  10. November coming fire... Samhain grim by SexyKellyOsbourne · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The appeal will mostly likely fall through and end in a huge out-of-court settlement for Intel as they did before with Integraph (for $300 million), as $150 million is nothing compared to the cost of Intel delaying their Itaniums when the Hammer hits the shelves.

    I've hardly ever heard of Integraph outside of a few lousy graphics cards, or their workstation Clipper chips -- and just how much of Integraph's corporate income comes from suing Intel?

    1. Re:November coming fire... Samhain grim by tongue · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've hardly ever heard of Integraph outside of a few lousy graphics cards, or their workstation Clipper chips -- and just how much of Integraph's corporate income comes from suing Intel?

      Then you obviously do jack shit with engineering workstations. Intergraph's graphics cards and workstations were for years among the best in the business. Overpriced, perhaps, but technologically sophisticated. when i worked in huntsville doing graphics, we used to get intergraph workstations on loan from the corporate office to use in our demos and at tradeshows. it was like christmas time, four or five times ayear. anyway, the whole reason this is an issue is because intergraph was doing this stuff years before intel decided to.

      Aside from graphics and engineering workstations, intergraph sells a lot of gis and civil engineering solutions worldwide.

    2. Re:November coming fire... Samhain grim by Jahf · · Score: 3, Informative

      I used to live near the Intergraph home base (Huntsville, Alabama ... and before someone goes "Alabama, no wonder", it's got a number of technical and scientific companies).

      Intergraph's past has been like a smaller version of SGI, only with less flashy products (scientific workstations more so than graphics, although both did both). They started out as a proprietary systems company that did massive value adds to existing technology.

      However, in the mid-90's they became more and more dependent on Microsoft and Intel to do alot of their work. As such they became less specialized but still higher cost.

      In the mid-late-90's they had a number of blunders (including the now infamous Windows NT-commanded navy ship that went dead in the water due to software issues). They also fumbled on the emerging consumer PC 3D graphics card market ... they were one of the early players there and could have kicked butt but it takes a lot of work to get into the consumer market from the high-end market (again, visions of SGI).

      They still had high-end hardware ... we ran what at the time was one of the largest NNTP servers for free at the ISP I was working at because we running it on Intergraph machines and they were using us as a stress-test (by the time I left in 1999 it had nearly a terabyte of storage in 3 * 12 drive RAID chassis) ... but as part of the test it had to run Windows, which was not my favorite choice for NNTP).

      I won't bad mouth them too much, I got a free dual PPro server and external 6 drive RAID case from one of the Intergraph admins who worked with us on the NNTP server. I loved that Beast.

      Anyway ... they made good products, but from what I've seen they have spiraled down alot since their heyday. I wouldn't be surprised if the Intel lawsuits (and this is by no means the first one Intergraph has filed) are a major source of cash for them.

      --
      It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
    3. Re:November coming fire... Samhain grim by ek_adam · · Score: 5, Informative

      Intergraph has been around since about 1970. I worked at Intergraph from 1990-1996. They used to make their own CAD workstations; hardware & software. This was back when a high end CAD workstation would cost 50-75 thousand dollars. The hardware would often include it's own furniture with dual or triple monitors built in and a D-size digitizer.

      They were never a consumer product company. They sold workstations to certain engineering and design niches. Their specialty is civil engineering and geographic infomation software. Have you ever looked at a topographic map? At one point all USCGS topographic maps were made on Intergraph workstations. They sell a lot of 911 systems, a spin-off of their other GIS stuff.

      They sold some electronic design software, mostly a spin-off of the products they used in house to design their Clipper chip (not the encryption Clipper chip. Boy do I remember the furor when the govt started talking about that!).

      They wrote their own publishing software based on a gencoding system similar to SGML. This was used for all of their in-house documentation. TV Guide used an enhanced version of this system for a few years.

      I worked in their mechanical division. They were doing object oriented programming in the early 1980's, long before it became popular. Unfortunately, being one of the first, they made a lot of mistakes in the way they chose to implement it, which led to an enormous number of bugs and workarounds in the later products that were built on the same core technology. I could model anything in I/EMS. However, for anything beyond simple models, I'd spend about 40% of my time working around bugs. I/VDS (shipbuilding software) was built on top of I/EMS. They wone a $600 million contract with the Navy back in 1990-1991.

      Shortly before the Pentium came out they were realizing that PC's were approaching serious CAD workstation levels. People were not going to pay $35k for a Clipper workstation when they could get a PC maybe half the speed, but one-tenth the cost. They made a couple of deals with Intel and sold their clipper chip unit to Sun. They were one of the first companies to ship a computer with a Pentium inside, and they were the first to ship a multi-processor Pentium machine. Back when a good $2k Pentium PC would ship with 16 or 32MB of RAM. They were shipping a $10k PC with 256MB of RAM, four processors, and a graphics card optimized for major vector graphics work. Note: vector graphics, not animation. Gamers were very disappointed when this $10k machine would do worse on Doom than their $2k machine at home. Still it had major horsepower. Bill Gates used an Intergraph workstation when he introduced Windows NT. When he said "This is the coolest machine in the world!", INGR stock rose about 30% the next day. Then one day as a couple of Intergraph's engineers were working with some Intel engineers to optimize Intergraph's next CAD workstation to work with the Pentium II the Intergraph engineer said "Hey, that looks an awful lot like one of our old Clipper designs." and the patent lawsuits and corporate warfare started.

      Unfortunately, though they pioneered a lot of things, they kept getting passed by the new kid on the block. PTC's Pro/Engineer had all of the features of I/EMS with twice the speed, half the cost, and relatively no bugs. (That was back in 1995. Now Pro/E is in almost the same position relative to SolidWorks.) And in hardware, you can't keep selling $10k CAD workstations when 1GB of RAM is about $100. They've spunoff or shut down about 3/4 of their old operations and are concentrating on what they're good at. GIS and suing Intel.

  11. I simply can't justify buying Intel anymore by Trogre · · Score: 4, Informative

    ... not after they've confirmed their chips will be TCPA/DRM enabled.

    We can only hope that AMD won't sell out in the same way.

    --
    "Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
    1. Re:I simply can't justify buying Intel anymore by 56 · · Score: 3, Informative

      AMD has already confirmed that their chips with be Palladium compliant...

    2. Re:I simply can't justify buying Intel anymore by WeaponOfChoice · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Time to stock up on Ultrasparcs and Alphas... (and I guess forever abandon windows for Unix would be a necessary part of it too...)

      If the industry is determined enough sooner or later you won't have a choice, you'll have Palladium or you won't have a computer.

      Still, there's the Soaring Dragon to consider, can't see the chinese buying the whole TCPA thing in the short term...

      --


      It's not that I'm Anti-American - I'm Pro-Freedom
  12. Re:Suspened??? by unicron · · Score: 5, Funny

    "It's an untruthatude!"

    "Oh, is that like a falsisity?"

    "Yes, your honor."

    "Oh, now I understandify."

    --
    Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
  13. Ignore the "General Public" by Dareth · · Score: 3, Informative

    Let's make this a discussion about a technology issue by people who know about technology. AMD Hammer chips have the "status quo" better label because of their 32bit compatibility combined with 64bit advancement. This is seen as a bridge to true 64bit computing without losing the current investment in 32bit software. In regards to this patent lawsuit, how will it affect Intel? I don't believe the amounts are large enough to even make a dent in Intel's publicity budget, much less affect their long term outlook for this line of processors. Only time will tell. As for the "General Public", they can go check out the local trade shows where they can get some great deals on *wince* "Authentic Pentium Computers for $300".

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
  14. Emergency dispatch by Goonie · · Score: 3, Informative
    Intergraph also provides equipment and services for emergency dispatch - in essence, allocating resources to 911 calls.

    They got a contract from a previous state government here in Victoria (Australia) to do this for the ambulance service. It was a massive screwup, with buggy software, inexperienced staff, people at the top of the ambulance department mysteriously going to work for Intergraph after signing the contract with them, and opposition from the ambulance drivers' union, and eventually the contract had to be cancelled amidst political scandal.

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
  15. Closing Prices by hopbine · · Score: 4, Informative

    INTC 17.30 +0.31 +1.82% 77.26 Mil
    AMD 6.14 -0.18 -2.85% 5.239 Mil
    INGR 18.40 -0.64 -3.36% 1.151 Mil
    So who is suffering ?

    --
    Semper ubi sub ubi
  16. Re:What will Integraph do with the money? by devnull17 · · Score: 3, Funny

    No, but it will certainly buy the top brass a really, really big boat.

  17. My thoughts by sheddd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Intergraph is doing wrong; this patent basically covers a crossbar to route instructions to their proper place. Not a super novel idea IMO...

    BUT the means are justified. Intel's an immoral Juggernaut. Intergraph was their golden child for a couple years; Intel used INGR boxes to show off their new stuff...

    Then INGR (perhaps wrongly) started to go after mobo mfg,'s over a patent they had on L2 cache (which is a stronger patent then the one above). Mobo mfg's shout 'help, Intel' and Intel proceeded to destroy INGR's Hardware division. At that time they were the only reasonable CPU to use for high end graphics (except SUN's stuff but there's no way SUN would sell to a compeditor).

    So INGR stopps getting any engineering info and this puts them a year behind in their mobo design (a year is deadly).

    This suit's been going on forever. Earlier this year INGR had the ability to stop Itanic production but caved for a piddly amount of money (the INGR CEO, Jim Taylor, basically got intimidated by The Intel CEO, Craig Barrett, into giving them patent rights for nothing). I would've loved to have INGR's say in that room. I would've shut them down out of despite the damn money.

    Predatory corporations like Intel need to be taught a lesson occasionally.

    Hammer, Hammer, Hammer!

  18. Re:Suspened??? by The+Cydonian · · Score: 3, Funny

    Erm, are you slashturbating?

    --
    More than mere navel gazing.