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."

Comments

Re:deploy patents!

[Dolphinzilla]

You are partially correct the laser was "officially" invented in 1958 - however the maser was invented in 1953 (microwaves instead of visible light) The laser was at the time a predictable outgrowth - and was theorized to be possible. The patent in question mentions radiation in general, as well as lasers radiation. So while it seems amazing that somone could have that much foresight, its not improbable.

Re:With a Friggin Deathgrip on Government

[FFFish]

Ever notice that most of those people who are in power are ex-lawyers?

Ever notice that contract language has grown increasingly more complicated over the years, as a means of ensuring lawyer income?

Ever notice the increase in responsibility-declaiming lawsuits over the years, as lawyers take any bullshit to court as a means of ensuring their income?

Ever notice that judges are allowing more and more of these cases, as a means to ensure their continued employment?

It's the slow death of a society, crushed by the weight of a useless population of lawyers who can only feed off the harm they cause to others.

We want to save ourselves, we gotta fire up those frickin laser beams already. Time for some BBQ!

Re:With Friggin Laster Beams...

[kcbrown]

Yeah, you're a communist. You think economies are zero-sum games.

I have no idea what one (communism) has to do with the other (whether or not the economy is a zero-sum game).

But the global economy, at any rate, is a zero-sum game, with two exceptions:

• changes in the population
• changes in productivity (the amount of production generated by an individual in a period of time. So making people work longer hours does not increase productivity because they're spending more time in order to accomplish more work, whereas having them tend a machine that produces ten times what they could do by hand is an increase in productivity)

After accounting for those two things, the global economy must be a zero-sum game because money is a direct representation of human production. Were this not the case, you wouldn't get inflation (an overall increase in the prices of goods) as a direct result of printing more money.

Now, the individual local economies are not zero-sum games, but that is only because they have external inputs and outputs, such as foreign trade and foreign investment.