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Machine Vision Patents Thrown Out
chalker writes "Cognex Corporation, the world's leading supplier of machine vision systems,
announced today that the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas has ruled in favor of Cognex in its lawsuit against the Lemelson Medical, Education & Research Foundation.
It held that the claims of 14 patents asserted by Lemelson are invalid and unenforceable , and not infringed by Cognex. Co-plantiffs included barcode reader manufacturers Symbol Technologies, Accu-sort Systems, and Zebra Technologies amongst others. These patents were classic "submarine" patents orginally applied for in 1954, but tied up in the patent office and changed over the next four decades to cover changes taking place in the machine vision field. Lemelson had threatened to sue numerous end-users, including Motorola and Ford, over the past two decades and had settled all of them out of court for over $1.5 billion in licensing fees. For once a judge has seen how ridiculous our patent system is."
a judge has seen how ridiculous our patent system is.
Now if only the rest of us can do the same.
What?
I plan to trademark the "TM" trademark symbol, and then charge everyone else royalties to use it. Once that is successful, I will patent that as a new business method.
I have a patent on making comments about having a patent on patents, so all those of you who say "I'm going to patent getting patents" now owe me royalties...
Oh, no, I just got a cease & desist letter from someone who says he holds a patent on making comments about people making comments about patenting getting patents. I hope he'll accept my cross-licensing deal.
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Yes.
Now that's some deep sea men!
Am I the only one to consider it ironic that it took a patent about "Machine Vision" to make someone in the legal system see just how stupid some patents are.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.