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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."
I didn't really know where the name came from until recently, so I'll comment on it (maybe it's ITFA, but I didn't RTFA). Apparently they're claled "submarine" patents because they only surface when necessary. Like when 3dfx sued nVidia and then nVidia countersued for trivial patents so that they could end up with a cross-licensing agreement.
If this is wrong, I've been misinformed, will apologize, and then hunt down whatever sick mind thought it could safely spread lies on the Internet (of all places!).
True story.
This is only a District Court decision (District of Nevada) so it is not binding precendent elsewhere. But it will interesting to see if this is the beginning of a trend that eventually kills the major cash cow of the Lemelson foundation. The foundation's business model has been to sue everyone in sight (or at least everyone who makes image recognition systems) and then to offer a license on the patents for an amount less than the cost of defense. It's been a very effective strategy. But there are tons of other Lemelson lawsuits in the works, and I am sure the lawyers are all reading this decision very carefully tonight.
Apparently a patent only lasts about 17 years. So that's not as bad as a copyright, because if I recall a copyright lasts for around the life of the individual + ~20years(correct me if I'm wrong, one site said about 95 years).
In anycase, the US concept of the patent was used as a device to protect individual property rights during a time when the US needed technology bad (think back to when England had efficient factories, and the US wanted to know said secrets). Now with the concept of the corporation, it seems that the ideals of the patent have been corrupted. However, I can see the importance of protecting intellectual property rights, but at the same time, the US corporate world is beating every US citizen over the head with laws that should be corrected.
Henry VI, Part II. Act one, scene one.
>Even foreign governments.
It never ceases to amaze me that these so-called "foreign" governments seem ever willing to follow any rule the US makes, or even implies.
Why does I.P. litigation survive? Seems to me the first nation to simply ignore these stifling rules would gain the advantage that could lead to industrial superiority. While "we" are busy suing each other in a ceaseless effort to keep ideas from flourishing into productive new venues, someone else could certainly be ignoring all that as so much bullshit that happens in RightPondia, and getting on with business.
It's not just IP laws. For instance, just because the USA is stuck in the legacy of 1937 doesn't mean some other country couldn't be doing the whole fuel-and-paper-from-hemp thing. But instead, everybody seems to be happy as clams following the "lead" of the US, no matter how wrong the US gets it.
I've never understood it. Maybe a true, complete, and irrevocable economic collapse in the US will help other countries on the road toward cultural and political independence. It doesn't look like anything else is ever going to do it.
If the US Congress decided Up was Down, the rest of the goddamned world would follow suit, people saying the whole while "in a FREE country Up is Up and Down is Down" even as their own leaders follow like ducks on a fishing line.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Lemelson built his empire on what are called submarine patents - applications which are prosecuted for many many years before issuing. Once issued, the owner then goes after the big companies who have dominated the market in the meantime. That's how he made his billions.
I used to work in the patent office. My supervisor once brought in a Lemelson application he was working on - it's original filing date was 35 years earlier. From what he said, the original application was for a memory chip, but over the years Lemelson added bits of information here and there, and by the time my supervisor got the case, it was for a microprocessor of some kind. Basically, he played the patent system pretty close to the edge, but pretty much legally, I guess.
For those who find this shocking - the current patent system measures length of patent term from the date of application, so submarine patents of the extreme nature of Lemelson's are pretty much not possible any more (except if the application is classified - a few years ago a patent came out which had been classified some 67? years previously IIRC).
Nonsense. Where do you people get this crap?
Corporations are individuals as far as civil offenses are concerned. If a corporation gets caught committing a civil offense it is fined just the same as an individual is.
Corporations are not individuals as far as criminal offenses are concerned however. If a corporation gets caught committing a criminal offense, it is the individuals who authorized or committed the crime who will be subject to criminal prosecution.
So in your example, if they knowingly dumped poison into someones drinking water, the people who did it would be in jail for attempted murder.
Mmmm.. Donuts