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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
We're talking about patents that were put in when? Since before the space race?
How can it be make good business sense to have these patents still applicable now? Why the hell were they put in limbo for so damn long?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Prior art that!
What? You mean Jiffy Pop popcorn wasn't the first one to patent this technique?
This may be a death rattle for Lemelson's submrine patents. The dead "inventor" recently had suits thrown out on this issue. Basically, under prosecution laches, they are charged with gaming the system deliberately or without any reasonable reason. Fortunately, this old trick is harder to perform now that patent terms run from the date of filing (with some possible adjustments) instead of date of issuance.
Aside from the fact the Description of the patents makes them sound like a patent on FIRE and if its held up I want the wheel, isn't there enough out there to show our patent system is completely broken ?
The primary purpose of the patent system seems to be allowing those that don't plan on developing technology, improving technology or doing any of the work needed to advance technology to practise legal extortion on those that do.
See, before the 1990's, patents took decades to be approved. They've now gone and made things work the other way, approving them too fast now.
Can someone *PLEASE* find a happy medium between friggin fast and damned slow?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I understand how most people here reject the ideas of patents infringing development, and would automatically argue this is some "unjustice." But, this is a legitimate application of law. It seems this artice was biasly submitted knowing how a "45 year old patent" striking down current development would affect readers.
Now, if patents do infact hurt productivity enough, it would be reasonable to augment/abandon patent laws. Nevertheless, one must keep in sight the nature of patent laws: protection of developers.
This quote is from Yale Office of Cooperative Research
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.
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.
You avoid any patents on anything you have dreamed up by PUBLISHING IT, even on the internet!
No matter how stupid it sounds, put it in writing, crude drawings or both.
Once you publish, it's PRIOR ART and unpatentable!
The irony which you have to admire is that US citizens hate importing shit cuz they lose jobs. But US industry loves it because instead of paying a skilled labourer say 15$/h or whatnot they can get a way with "we won't kill your family today" as a wage in a third world asian country.
What I don't get though, aren't US industry leaders also US citizens? So basically they steal jobs from their neighbours to support slave labour. And we admire these people as "famous CNN headshots" because???
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
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"?
It was my understanding that U.S. patents were only applicable within the U.S. Can someone please clarify?
Later,
Phil
Backdated is not really a good word for it. Patents filed from 1995 forward have a life of 20 years from the date of filing (not issue). This patent was filed before 1995 and therefore it has a life of 17 years from the date of issue.
I've been researching my own patent recently so this is interesting.
Wow, so they managed to keep it pending for 40 or so years. Most impressive. I understand it's actually better to do it that way because once you patent the technology becomes available for reverse-engineering. I thought you could only keep it patent pending for about six years though.
It appears that you can but that the legal ground is a little shaky. Current jurisprudence appears to indicate that this'll get thrown unless unless the chip company caves and settles.
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!
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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."
Where do people like you come up with such rubbish. These people who applied for the inventions were "way" ahead of their time. Look at the year of their filing. Unbelievable!
Things are obvious to you because someone else did the hard work and showed it to you. Go and do something original just once in your life.
It's the patent office's fault for taking so long to approve the patent that is the real problem.
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!
It seems to make sense, however when you say, "So why not have the US make the chips they themselves need and have other "third world nations" make things they need [infrastructure, food, etc.]" you run into a fundamental problem: Third world countries lack the means of organized production and funding for such production to manufacture the things they need. In the global economy, the only option that exists for them to approach industrialization is to export for x ammount of years until they've allocated enough capital to develop themselves as an industrial state. But when that happens, they rely on some other existing third world country for the raw materials suitable to their particular production.
Have any other suggestions?
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
No offense, but countries like china have existed for thousands of years before the West came about.
It seems only after the west has tried to "modernize" [re: exploit] nations like china that these "sudden problems of infrastructure" have appeared.
Also from a "nature" standpoint if a piece of land cannot sustain human life, maybe, just maybe, humans shouldn't live there.
However, if the land cannot sustain life because urban sprawl [re: Canada] or Nike Factories [re: China, Taiwan, etc] have sprung up then that's hardly a problem of the country.
Essentially the solution is two pronged. Both sides have to simultaneously cut off dependencies for this to work. If say the US cuts off from the other nations before they setup farming, etc then they're screwed.
What it really boils down to is greed.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
These patents were created by Jerome Lemelson "The Patent King" Fortune Magazine ran a very long article on his exploits two years ago:
Ok, firstly, please read the patent. It is not as trivial as it may appear from the few lines description.
It doesn't strike me as earth shatteringly novel, but then, most patents never have. It's written in usual obfuscated patent speak, which doesn't help.
The workaround: It is quite specific about collimated beams of radiation. So stick a lens in the way, de-collimate your beam, and the patent no longer applies.
If you are putting the laser through a window, then a couple of lenses, to de-focus the beam, and then focus it in the reaction zone will do the trick.
I'm not sure how this related to chip fabriacation, but I'm going to hazard a guess that it's in a CVD style deposition stage. The only time that precise focus would be needed is if your etching by laser onto a surface. In which case, you don't have a flow of matter.
This will not work if you are reflecting a collimated beam around so that it crosses the reaction zone multiple times.
Any fabiration engineers want to elucidate on where this patent might apply? Specifically, would a lens (I'm thinking of a power of around -1 uD) stop the system from working?
However, working around the patent may be considered a tacit admission of it's validity, and thus is a tatic in opposition to the legal challenge.
I'll go further than the above poster.
If the patent mentioned lasers (albeint by description, rather than by name) in 1957 then by Jove, that's worth a patent.
The advantages of using collimated and coherent light over other light sources in a chamical reaction are great, and certinally non-obvious back then.
The only thing I don't like about this patent is the submarine laywering over it. The content is quite reasonable, if not somewhat out of date.
You know, you should never verb a noun.
:-)
This patent has moved from the period where it was a novel, and powerful innovation, into textbook area. Part of the problem with software patents is that this take a year or so, compared with the 18 years patent life.
With chemistry, your looking at 15-20 years. That's one of the reasons why there is so much chemistry research - the patent lifespan is just right in that field.
The delaying of the patent for so long has crippled the use of this technique. This was not by bad buerocracy, but by deliberate intent. It is this deliberate intent to delay the onset of the patent that I object to - as this technique, novel and non-obvious in the 1960's, is commonplace now. The patent would have been, on balance, a good one in its time.
The loophole was plugged - to prevent more of this in the furture. The detritus from it's existance needs to be delt with.
Oh, and the patent does not apply to laser printers. It's quite specific about collimated beams of energy, and streams of matter to undergo chemical raction. Laser printers do not have a stream of matter, as defined in the patent. There is a reaction, which might be defined as chemical, on the photosensitive drum. However, I'm quite sure [0] the the motion of the drum will not qualify as a stream of matter.
[0] I'm not a patent lawyer. This is not legal advise. For legal advise, consult a professional liscened in your juristriction.
Okay...so if the patent is 45 years old (1958) but was patented in 1987, I see a big catch-22.
If the patent does not start until 1987, then anything doing this from before 1987 should now be prior art.
If anything from before 1987 is not considered prior art because the patent was created in 1958, then the patent should be enforced from that date, not the 1987 date, and therefore expired.
Oh...sorry Government and sense...my bad
These actions are almost universally seen by practitioners as abuses of the patent system, NOT as appropriate uses. Thankfully, in most instances current PTO procedure prevents these abuses. However, this type of prosecution tactic, even though it resulted in a patent issuing, still may not ultimately be successful because of a doctrine called "prosecution laches."
Generally, the doctrine of laches applies to protect a defendant when a plaintiff has sat on its rights for too long. The doctrine of prosecution history laches, very simply put, states that a patentee who has delayed prosection for too long may not enforce its patent once it issues. I am not saying that this is the case here; that is for a court to decide. But I do feel the need to note that this doctrine was recently "revived" by courts after a long period during which the doctrine was never even discussed, much less applied.
You may wonder who the patent holder was in the case that recently "revived" the doctrine of prosecution history laches. His name, I believe, is Jerome Lemelson.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
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".
- Matter/electron/atom enters interaction,
- Photon enters interaction,
- Electron absorbs photon,
- Matter/electron/atom leaves interaction
Ultimately we seem to end up with a patent on quantum electrodynamics (electrons interacting with photons).Okay, you could probably use that argument on quite a few patents when you get down to the basic physics. It's interesting to ask how will patents deal with molecular/atomic nanotechnology. As manufacturing scales get smaller, and fewer particles are involved, will patenting a 'manufacturing method' turn into an attempt to patent basic chemical/physical processes?
This is an artifact of the old patent system. You had a patent from 17 years after the date of issue, therefore, keeping the thing barely alive on life support until the technology became worthwhile was a game. If either of these had issued, without continuations when applied for, they would have been worthless.
Now, patents are timed 20 years from the date of filing. That means it is never good for the applicant to delay as far as term extension. (There may be other reasons, such as figuring out what you really want, to take your time.)
lemelson, the patent originator, should be well known to the slashdot crowd, but on the internet, institutional memory is an oxymoron
the delay in patent filing is not due to USPTO ineptitude. rather, this is classic lemelson tactics:
for an example, google for "lemelson" and "machine vision." (here's a link for the google impaired.) briefly, lemelson patented the idea that some sort of machine could do quality inspection of items coming off of an assembly line. he had no invention, he had a wish. he ammended and ammended and ammended that patent for 30 years before it was accepted. in the meantime, laser bar code readers had been invented (by someone else), and he had changed the wording on his patent application to include that technological development. Viola! he invented laser bar code readers, ex post facto, and his estate went on a suing spree.
FWIW, the USPTO changed the policies that allowed this in the mid 90s. still sucks.
Fermat's other theorem: "I have a simple proof, but I can't write it down as I fear it's a DMCA violation to discuss it"
You'd think people would at least check the Nobel prizes for prior art. This sort of stuff was the subject of work by Norrish and Porter around 1950, for which they received the Nobel prize in 1967 (together with Eigen). More info here.
Those patents were applied for many, many years ago. Therefore, patent pending protection has been in affect for decades. The net result is to effectively extend patents by decades. This is wrong. The patent clock should be retroactive to the day the patent was filed, because the protection effectively is. These are extreme examples of that...but I've got to wonder how many other unexploded 'time bombs' like these are still out there.
In case anyone is actually curious, US Patent #1 was issued to Samuel Hopkins in 1790 for a new apparatus and process to make potash.
#2 was something about candles, and #3 was a flour mill
The patent was signed by George Washington himself (government was much smaller back then; that same year, Washington and Hamilton personally reviewed the bids for the first ever Federal construction project, a lighthouse near Norfolk, VA).
All's true that is mistrusted
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!
If the patent mentioned lasers (albeint by description, rather than by name) in 1957 then by Jove, that's worth a patent.
The MASER was invented before then. The only difference between a MASAR and a LASER is the frequency of the EM radiation.
The advantages of using collimated and coherent light over other light sources in a chamical reaction are great, and certinally non-obvious back then.
It's long been known that "light" can affect chemical reactions. e.g. photography.
The idea that monochromatic light would be best for catalysing a specific reaction probably crossed someone's mind as soon as the "photon model" was accepted.
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.