Slashdot Mirror
Chip Firm Hit By 45-Year-Old Patent
JPMH writes "The Register is reporting that a Taiwanese chip foundry is being sued over two chemistry patents, one over 45 years old. The patents at issue were filed in 1957 and 1964, but are still in force because they were not granted until 1987 and 1992 respectively. The first patent, 4,702,808, details an apparatus and method for initiating chemical reactions by focusing "radiant energy, such as a laser" onto streams of particles. The second patent, 5,131,941 also details an apparatus and method for initiating chemical reactions, but this time radiation is used to provide the energy kick needed to get the compounds to interact."
Dear Engineers,
Somebody power up one of the lasers and aim at the plaintiff's attorneys.
Thank you,
Geeks for Tort Reform
--
Closing Windows. Opening Eyes.
Linux-Universe
Freedom Is Universal
Linux-Universe
I wonder if my "Collection and use of energy originating from a hydrogen based nuclear fussion reaction by radiation energy or via potential energy" would pass in the US?!
Patent the world and I'll patent YOU!
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
General Motors is suing competing manufacturers of the so-called `horseless carriage' for infringing their patent 236635849, which specifies a way in which the `wheel' - a flat, cylindrical object - can be used for the motion and transportation of people and inanimate objects.
"I think it would be a good idea" Gandhi, on Western Civilisation
Prior art that!
What? You mean Jiffy Pop popcorn wasn't the first one to patent this technique?
I'm bloody sick of SHIT made in turd world countries....
Third world countries are defined as being export-only, pre-industrial nation states. If things werent made and exported from third world countries, they wouldn't be third world countries, now would they?
Go read a book.
So far we have patents for Fire and the Wheel.
I'm going to claim the patent for Baked Bread.
I guess the first company I'm going to SCO is McDonalds. They have untill Friday to stop making hamburger rolls. Otherwise I'm going to revoke their license.
Then after I take out the big guy, I'm going to go after Wonder Bread.
Huh?
Taiwan should just fire the fricken' "lasers" anyways. Screw the patents
So they patented the use of a magnifying glass to start a fire.
a flat, cylindrical object
Well, you could play off the semantics of "flat" and say that their patent only applies to objects that fit within the 2-d plane. However, the judge might not buy that. Instead, they may choose the more common definition of "flat" which is that the object has a surface that appears flat to the naked eye, or can be verified flat within some industry standard number of angstroms.
The more obvious workaround?
Mill all your wafers into N-sided objects.
If N is sufficiently large, you don't lose much viable surface and you void the patent. I say, choose 69-agons. You know. To screw their patent.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Another patent infringement lawsuit has been filed by Wonder, Inc. against Orowheat and Kilpatrick's. Wonder alledges that the firms violate it's patent which covers presentation and packaging of bread products that have been uniformly cut into what they call "slices."
As of recently, US = The World
But I have to get to Crucial and place an order for some DRAM before the prices take off.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
So, there's this Russian guy, and he like files this patent, and then, y'know, he's like told that it'll take 45 YEARS for the patent to come through, and so he, uh, asks the Patent Office if it'll be the morning or the afternoon, and they say "Why?", and, he like goes, "Well, I've got a whole bunch of LAWYERS coming round in the afternoon."
...and just about everything else.
Except he's not Russian, he's American. So I guess in CORPORATE AMERICA, lawyers patent YOU!
Actually the wheel was patent #2, not #23663589.
Patent #1, of course, was "a method of rapidly oxidizing combustible materials using concentrated heat and oxygen."
And the "wheel" came before patent #3, which was "A method and appararatus for creating regular rectangular subdivisions of a yeast byproduct-enhanced grain based matrix."
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
You know, you should never verb a noun.
:-)
The wheel was patent #3,
Fire was patent #2,
#1 was "a method of pissing people off by way of allowing the filing of patent for ideas not yet implemented".
yeah yeah. it's the lawyers' fault. they're the evil money grubbers. and everyone else is just in it for the satisfaction of a job well done. oh wait no.
what about those fancy shmancy computer programmers. they made it so we need to hire an entire technical staff to run our business. before the programmers shoved their computers onto everyone's desk, you didn't need an IT department. Just keep your records in trusty books. Paper filing. that's always been the best way to do things.
and don't get me started with the three letter acronym. RAM, CPU, LCD... it's their secret code they use to make sure we can't get rid of them. they're always scheming to get more money.
email is just how they get you to buy antivirus software. But you don't need it. You want to talk to someone, call them. But the phone company's milking all your money away with their long distance charges and their hidden fees. So you'd better go see them in person. But you'd better walk because the airline and car companies all have their own weird language and strange charges...
rant rant rant. woop dee doo. what else is new?
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
Hey if enough Slashdot users try to patent ridiculous concepts/ideas/the letter I/etc we can break the US patent system since I bet it only uses a 32-bit unsinged interger for storing the patent number in the USPO database.
Enough patents get filed and *wham* no more patents can get filed until the USPO upgrades their computer systems to handle it. Knowing how long it takes government agencies to approve a computer purchase plan and then tender bids from competitive vendors in the market we could easily shutdown the USPO for at least three years! This would give us, the EFF, and other sane people some breathing room to try and enact sensible laws to restrict the ridiculousness of these patent lawsuits we keep seeing!
I'll have to disagree. We should do with them what they did in the Hitchhiker's Guide of the Galaxy series.