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Five PC Vendors Face Patent Lawsuit
Combuchan writes "This article from internetnews.com caught my attention: While Linux lawsuits gobble up the IT community's mindshare, a lesser-known legal action is being fought seeking billions of dollars from five PC vendors. Patriot Scientific, a small, San Diego-based seller of embedded microprocessors for automotive and scientific applications, is suing Sony, Fujitu, Matsushita, Toshiba, and NEC, alleging infringement of a Patriot patent for what it calls 'fundamental microprocessor technology.'"
I guess suing is one way to make money, but not always the fastest.
Look, who has the clout in congress to get the patent mess cleaned up? Big companies. Thus, the fastest way to clean it up, have big companies get harassed with expensive lawsuits like this. A lot. If Intel, Microsoft, IBM, etc., waste enough money fighting stupid patents (note - I know nothing about the Patriot patents, they may or may not be stupid), then you can bet that things will change.
Just a thought. Of course, laws would probably change in a way that makes it harder for anobody to sue big companies, but leave it just as easy for big companies to patent "one click instead of two to buy an item" type idiocy, but we can hope, can't we?
Had anyone else not heard about this company before today?
these guys are idiots. Here's the patent:
San Diego, CA - August 7, 2003 - - Patriot Scientific Corporation (OTCBB:PTSC) developer of key microprocessor technologies and scalable Java solutions for mobile products, today announced that it has received an additional patent for fundamental microprocessor technology currently in widespread use. United States Patent #6,598,148 B1 has been granted for PTSC's variable speed clock acceleration technology for RISC and CISC processors. The patented technology not only bolsters PTSC's licensable microprocessor IP portfolio, but further strengthens the company's patent rights.
Future patent grants are expected that will further expand PTSC's rights within these fundamental technologies.
Jim Turley, editor of Silicon-Insider and previous editor of Microprocessor Report and a member of the company's Scientific Advisory Board, said, "After analyzing PTSC's patent, I'm certainly impressed with its range of coverage, basically representing the dominant means of accelerating internal microprocessor clock speeds."
Jeff Wallin, president and CEO of PTSC stated, "This is an important patent grant as it further validates our early innovation of key processing technologies that are ensconced in our IP portfolio. It not only gives our customers an extra measure of certainty in terms of our virginity and the technology but it substantially strengthens the validity and scope of our patent enforcement efforts."
Because of the breadth of the company's patent portfolio coupled with the size of the market benefiting from the company's protected technologies, the company is pursuing an intellectual property compliance program targeted at hundreds of companies using microprocessors with internal capabilities greater than 120 KHz. This is estimated to be in excess of a $200 billion market. Beatie and Osborn LLP, one of America's most prestigious law firms, represents the company's licensing and enforcement objectives.
Does any company actually have a business plan that isn't based around suing people any more?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
It says in the article that Patriot's patent was issued last summer.
Pentium chips have been around since the mid-90's.
Doesn't this make for a ridiculously clear case of prior art?
This could all be solved by a careful and considered destruction of the current US Patent Office, and it's replacement by something that actually works.
Kierthos
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
This crap is getting out of hand. The patent office is really starting to just give out any and all patents applied for. It's almost getting to the point where we need to have some kind of IP court that determines whether or not a certain idea/algorithm/process deserves a patent to begin with. If not, no patent. Period. If there's prior art, no patent. Period. This garbage needs to be burned before people/companies/criminals (take your pick) have the opportunity to sue.
Why is it that they're suing Intel customers but not Intel itself... seems like they're afraid to go after somebody who might challenge them rather than settle...
It seems the only people making serious money from high tech are the lawyers.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Here is the official patent from the USPTO. It was originally filed in 1998, but IC's have been around much longer than that, so I'm sure there's some prior art somewhere. This next quote could almost have come from the depths of the SCO complex:
Kinda sounds like Rambus and look where they've gone.
Amigori
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
Although Patriot has plans to move forward with its 32-bit processors and application-specific integrated circuits, Wallin said that product revenues were currently "negligible."
"Our main focus is the IP [intellectual property] business now," he said.
They don't actually make anything. They are a perfect example of why patents should be abolished - consumers and manufacturers all loose because of higher prices that support legalized protection rackets run by these thugs.
Although Patriot has plans to move forward with its 32-bit processors and application-specific integrated circuits, Wallin said that product revenues were currently "negligible."
"Our main focus is the IP [intellectual property] business now," he said.
Gee, this really reminds me of someone... can't think of the name...
Intel should outsource their legal team to a foreign country. Just imagine a team of high priced lawyers with heavy accents all using the wookie defense! They'd unstoppable!
The difference is, these guys are smart enough not to attack the gorilla. If they really had something, they'd name intel.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I suggest we nuke it. After all, we have plenty of them sitting around doing nothing, and what better use?
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
I think what would help more than patent reform though is tort reform. For one, making the losing party pay is a start. Also, finding a way to reduce lawsuits or using arbitration more often will contribute significantly. Reforming the patent system would be nice too though.
US businesses that currently accept chip and PIN/signature
Considering that even all the huge companies have business models based around patents. At least, I assume they do, considering that IBM has ~25,000 active patents (Including a record of about 3,400 awarded in 2001), and numbers I've heard for other huge companies are also astronomical.
To these companies, owning lots of patents on lots of sometimes crazy things is a way of protecting their turf and a good way of putting potential competitors out of business. If they try to tighten up U.S. patent law, they'll only be making their job harder. Besides, I imagine that the amount of money they lose off most these lawsuits is chicken-scratch compared to their coffers.
The problem is, this would appear to be at best a submarrined patent. You can't hold a patent on something that was a key to the tech boom of 1999-2001, and then show up in 2004 claiming you deserve royalties on it all. There comes a point where if a patent owner doesn't stop the theft of their technology, they forfeit their right to go to the courts...
The claims enumerated in patent 6,598,148 describe nothing more than an SMP system where the cache ram takes up at least 51% of the core and where the clock is variable. This is nothing unique and any idiot trained in the arts would have seen it as a trivial invention (SMP, variable clock, and large caches have all existed for quite some time) and therefore not worthy of a patent. Furthermore I don't see where Intel or their clients could be violating it except for the speed throttling overheat protection in the P4 and family processors. I know it's been said many times before but as far as the IT industry is concerned the USPTO needs to be scrapped or seriously funded because the way things work now are NOT acceptable, it's too easy for a bogus, stupid, or overbroad patent to slip through.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Yes, they'll change so only big companies can file stupid patents. :-)
no patent numbers were given. Here is a list of microprocessor related patents assigned to Patriot Scientific:
6,598,148 High performance microprocessor having variable speed system clock
5,809,336 High performance microprocessor having variable speed system clock
5,784,584 High performance microprocessor using instructions that operate within instruction groups
5,659,703 Microprocessor system with hierarchical stack and method of operation
All of these patents appear to be divisional patents of another patent:
5,440,749 High performance, low cost microprocessor architecture
which was filed in August of 1989 (for the most part, this date should be taken to be the effective priority date of all the above applications) and assigned to Nanotronics Corporation.
Please remember that titles, abstracts, and descriptions from the patent mean nothing legally. The only section which has any legal weight is the claims, so please don't start complaining about old microprocessors as "prior art" unless they actually do the same thing as is stated in the claims.
"I have a porkchop, you have a porkchop. I have a veal, you have a veal".
They filed the patent in 1998 and were just granted it. The original Pentium was already out by that time, so I don't see how its design could be impacted, unless they are trying to say the patent covers something newly introduced with the P3/P4.
I predict Intel will meet with grand success in their case.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Interesting, all of the manufacturers "happened" to be major Japanese PC vendors, and they are sued by a company called "Patriot Scientific?" Is this some sort of retaliation acts for Pearl Harbor?
Patriot's provocative plan
Ideas are not property, or at least should not be.
Actually, no, they don't. That's trademarks and trade secrets. Someone needs to learn a little more about IP law before posting as if they were authoritative.
I think that I have finally realized the missing part of this infamous formula:
1. Do X
2. ????
3. Profit.
The missing variable has been right in front of our eyes all along. It's sue everybody.
NJ Local Music Scene
my 386 did this with the turbo button.
:)
maybe that particular patent has more specifics that make it unique, but come on, the idea is pretty old and it was lame then (for a desktop that is hehe. control the speed of dos games
Does anyone notice that ALL 5 companies are originally from Japan?
Coincidence?
Pay attention to who they are suing. Japanese companies are famous for folding at the least sign of litigation (remember Rambus, anyone?) thus a likely first target to raise capital to start suing others. It would be rather nice if the Japanese sent some Yakuza over to negotiate.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Someone mod this guy up.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Seller sues vendors for microprocessor patent infringement. Not news.
Seller wins lawsuit against vendors for microprocessor infringement. News.
Let me know how it turns out.
For big companies, the current patent system is great: big companies have big patent portfolios that they cross-license. So, they don't generally have to worry about each other. That arrangement keeps new competitors out of the market. And patent application and prosecution costs are high enough that the number of stupid patents filed and prosecuted by small companies are negligible in comparison. Occasionally, something like this slips through. But by and large, stupid patents are filed by the big companies themselves and then cross-licensed in an arrangement that helps big companies.
Actually, no, they don't. That's trademarks and trade secrets. Someone needs to learn a little more about IP law before posting as if they were authoritative.
No, IP law needs to make sense, and have some relevance to the average Joe (not just megacorps).
I don't doubt your accuracy, on the legal side of the equasion. But when we piss and moan about the state of IP laws in the US (and the EU seems to have similar ideas), we don't espouse any "Leninist" ideas (as such)... We just want laws that can at least see "fair" from their lofty corporate towers.
No, there's a common law concept called "submarine patent" that does in fact exist. "Common law" means there's no formal law on the books, but it's something that judges accept as being there anyway.
When you are legally wronged, you do not have the right to just throw your hands in the air while the problem gets worse. You have a responsiblity to mitigate, or limit, the damages as best you can. Just because the other person started a fire, you can't let it burn the whole place down and blame it on them if you had the chance to stop it as a small fire.
So, a company that is being wronged by having their patent violated has an obligation to assert that they have a patent as soon as they realize what's going on. They can't just sit back and watch the other venture, then claim the profits if it suceeds and disavow involvement if it fails.
The penalty for not mitigating when you can is having your damaged knocked back to the point where you could have stopped them. Which, in the case of a submarined patent means "Yes, they did infringe... but you're not geting anything close to the damage award you thought you were geting."
You can't hold a patent on something that was a key to the tech boom of 1999-2001, and then show up in 2004 claiming you deserve royalties on it all.
Well, yes, you can. It's entirely legal, and six years is not an unreasonable period for detecting patent infringement and preparing a lawsuit.
There comes a point where if a patent owner doesn't stop the theft of their technology, they forfeit their right to go to the courts...
No, they don't forfeit their right by not prosecuting, even if they were aware of infringement. Their argument to recover past damages may become somewhat weaker, depending on the exact circumstances, but the patent remains valid and fully in force.
Because the manufacturers are more likely to settle. The producer of the OEM parts, whose entire business is based on the technology, is more or less obliged to put up a hell of fight.
These suits, although not legally, are basically extortionate. Nobody wants to actually go to trial, least of all the company bringing forth the claim. Said company just wants someone to mail money to their post office box in order that they be left alone.
Once one person buys a "license" they can then use this to spread FUD that said purchase "proves" their case. See SCO/Sun/Microsoft.
One possible defense approach is to argue that since the parts are purchased you are not the primary litigant at law. Plaintiff must first prove their case against the manufaturer of the part before you can be held liable for infringement. You may or may not be financially liable, but it isn't your job to defend the IP if you are not its genesis. If the argument is accepted by the judge this does not dismiss the case, but holds it in abeyance until the primary claim is settled.
Then the plaintiff must decide if they want to go up against the big gun or not. If they do not then the pending case will eventually be dismissed. If they do then at least the smaller fish has the big one as its ally, and if the big one prevails than the orginal suit may be dismissed as groundless.
If big fish loses then the settlement may be held to have sufficiently compensated the plaintiff and the suit against the smaller fish may be dismissed so long as they no longer infringe. Which they're not likely to do because the OEM source will have licensed the technology in order to continue to sell it.
While all of this is going on the legal issues become a bigger and bigger tarball encompassing more and more companies who are more and more likely to just settle and get it the bloody hell over with.
It's basically stealing the nerdy kid's lunch money.
KFG
Technically, the patent right belongs to he who first invented, not he who first filed. Gray could have taken Bell to court if not for the fact that Gray wasn't rich enough to hire an army of lawyers...
I say we take off, and nuke the site from orbit. Its the only way to be sure.
(This gratituous Aliens reference was brought to you today by boredom.)
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
Claim 1 does have some breadth. Arguably, though, this only covers systems with on-chip main memory (not cache) using more than half the real estate, some cache, and a variable-speed clock. Some microcontrollers fit those criteria, but they're not the most common ones. Bigger CPUs have off-chip memory, and low-end microcontrollers often have no cache system at all.
I mean, don't you think it's possible that those companies really are infringing their patents?
And anyway, why would big companies care? They have the legal resources to fight off bogus patent cases (just like the patent office intends), and the benifit probably outweighs the cost.
That said, if patent law were changed, say to charge far more money and do more research it would be a huge benifit to large companies who could afford the filing fee. If patent law were scrapped totaly, it would be a big benifit for large companies who could get products to market quickly.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It is "if you can't beat them, sue them.
Fight Spammers!
Silly me, this is slashdot. Last bastion of Leninist ideology where the belief that there should be no private property and everything should be free for the taking is held as a sacred truth.
This has to be one of the more idiotic statements I've read here. Why this got modded as "Insteresting" I'll never know.
bun-fhuinneog agam!
The problem is, this would appear to be at best a submarrined patent. You can't hold a patent on something that was a key to the tech boom of 1999-2001, and then show up in 2004 claiming you deserve royalties on it all. There comes a point where if a patent owner doesn't stop the theft of their technology, they forfeit their right to go to the courts
Uh, except patents generally take a couple years to get passed. And anyway, you can wait as long as you want to exercise your patent rights if you want to. Unisys waited until two years before their GIF patent expired to ask for royalties, and they got them.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Read the last line of the article:
"Our main focus is the IP [intellectual property] business now," he said.
WTF? Gee instead of actually providing something and furthering the choice of consumers we sue them...
Frankly if the US continues down this path they will only hurts themselves. As when a patent suit is launched US consumers are the ones that pay. I wonder if India and China have these problems....
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
What about this is non-trivial?
Variable speed clocks?
These were not a "new idea" in 1998.
Just because someone is able to convince the
USPTO of originality doesn't mean the idea was original.
(Still confused? See "Pop-Under Advertising Technology")
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Please examine US Patent #4,791,886, titled "Manner in which to relieve the American Judicial System from pointless lawsuits 3B", written by me. Specifically, I refer you to page 1,136 of the document which sets out the detonation of a thermonuclear device as the best way to destroy the office. I would also point out that three of the words in sentence #11 in the second paragraph also end with the letter G, just like in your post.
This is a serious infringement of my patent. Hire yourself a good lawyer buddy cause you're gonna get it.
Am I the only one who heard Roxette to sing "I'm gonna get blitzed for some sex"?
"Valuable patents Wallin said the scope of Patriot's patent litigation is not limited to makers of personal computers. Because such technology also is used by embedded processors in various other industries, he said, "We see this as applying equally to medical equipment, commercial equipment and other mass-produced consumer products." Wallin added, "This sounds terrible, but we intend to get around to everybody." I guess they're taking the slow but cautious route.
We tend to become like the worst in those we oppose. --Bene Gesserit Coda--
I don't know when the first Pentium came out with an on-chip clock, but that's probably not important anyway. I doubt if the patent is on the idea of an on-chip clock -- they can hardly claim to be the first people to have invented the concept of component integration! More likely they're claiming to have invented a design or manufacturing technique... oh well, might as well go look it up.
Yup, here's the 1995 patent application. It's too complicated for me, but they seem be claiming that their design manages to produce a steady clock signal even as temperature fluctuations play holy hell with the oscillations that produce the clock signal. Assuming I haven't totally mangled the concept, and that they really did think of this first, that's a pretty significant invention. It's certainly not on the same level as these business-process and software patents that we all love to hate.
Method and apparatus for restraining an animal on a vehicle
I fail to see how that relates.
This case seems like an attempt to captalize on unproven claims. By chasing after the end-user who does not have knowledge of the internal workings of the chip, it seems predatory. If there was really a valid claim of infringment then Patriot should have chased down Intel, not the end-users. But I guess this is the Intellectual Property game, chase down people that cannot defend themselves and then make money. Isn't that what SCO is saying they are going to do? File suit against an end-user that does not have the money nor the means to be able to prove that there is no infringment and then they win? Or make it so expensive to fight the claims that they cave-in and pay? Personally I would love to see laws that state that you can not hunt down end-users unless the claim for infringment has been proven. And then I would like to see penalities for filing suit against an end-user when someone by-passed the vendor, and the claims are proven wrong. It amounts, (IANAL) in my mind, to perjury -- making false claims in court and hoping that nobody catches you. So on the off chance that there is a closet-techie Congressman reading (heck I'll settle for a member of staff), Congress needs to make sure that intellectual property suits are aimed at vendors first, so the claims can be proven instead of the end-users.
Second, patents need to be tightened. Just because you come up with the idea of having a clock on the chip does not mean that someone else cannot come up with the a simular idea, but implemented in a different way, and make money.
You know, I have tempted to apply for a patent where URL's are spoofed using the latest Microsoft exploit for IE where the %01 is used to hide the real location of a web address. Then I'll sue Microsoft for violating my idea that I "came up with" in high school or something.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Maybe, but new/good ideas should be rewarded. Why not just let thinkers reap their own reward by selling their idea? Can you think of a better system?
Yeah, but there is the whole idea of statute of limitations. You only have so much time from the time that you realize that there is an infringment to file for remedies. So in my mind Intel could simply ask in court, "What rock have you been hiding under for the last six years?" And then win. IANAL, but I think that for something like this the limitation is like four years, but that depends on the state.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
I guess my next question would be, and perhaps someone knows the answer to this... in the list of claims, does an infringing work have to have ALL of the features listed in the claims? Likewise, for something to be prior art, does it have to posess all of those features as well? Because I see a great deal of those claims that co-incide well with pretty much every processor ever made, and a few that are unique. At what point is it considered infringement?
-Vendal Thornheart
For one, making the losing party pay is a start.
I think making the USPTO pay for at least part of the costs would be a better idea.
Because then it wold be in their interest not to grant bogous patents.
This reminds me of the story from 14 years ago of an engineer who claimed to have invented the microprocessor in 1970 before Ted Hoff.
He had a lot of papers to 'prove' his claim and was asking for a mere billion or so from Intel and Motorola.
He got his 15 minutes of fame and disappeared.
If that was you reading this now, hey, no offense buddy...
Still the idea of some small American company going up against five of the largest Japanese electronic keiretsu is absurd, especially if they try to do it in Japan. What a waste of paper.
sure, it's a serious, non-trivial patent, just of something that appears to have been around for decades.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
reading claim 1 of the patent -
any single chip static microcontroller that incorporates a substantial amount of RAM on chip, has bufferred memory access, and can run at multiple clock speeds fits the description in this claim. I think some versions of Mitsubishi M16 Hitachi H8 had enough RAM to cover more than half the chip and existed as early as 1996. This patent probably is bogus.
Claim 1:
1. A microprocessor integrated circuit comprising:
a program-controlled processing unit operative in accordance with a sequence of program instructions;
a memory coupled to said processing unit and capable of storing information provided by said processing unit;
a plurality of column latches coupled to the processing unit and the memory, wherein, during a read operation, a row of bits are read from the memory and stored in the column latch; and
a variable speed system clock having an output coupled to said processing unit;
said processing unit, said variable speed system clock, said plurality of column latches, and said memory fabricated on a single substrate, said memory using a greater area of said single substrate than said processing unit, said memory further using a majority of a total area of said single substrate.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Only in America...............Or maybe not???
Wtf is a "pheg"?
And i'm allowed to be excited, i've never got fp before =)
flamebait? that was my honest opinion!
Maybe, but new/good ideas should be rewarded.
Simply having a new/good idea should not be a lottery ticket nor should it be a license to impose a tax on others that come up with the same or similar idea independantly.
Why not just let thinkers reap their own reward by selling their idea?
Because they are trying to sell their idea to people who have already thought of it on their own (or customers of those people)?
The purpose of the patent system is to promote progress. If the system no longer does that than maybe it has outlived it's usefullness.
About the only case I could see this tactic having any merit would be if the parts supplier was located in some foreign country where the patent was not enforced, in which case, the product's shipments into this country becomes a customs issue. Outside of that, taking 5 separate corporations to court for the same charge because they buy parts from a specific vendor is crap.
On top of that, I seriously doubt that the lawyers would let their company base their business around products from Intel without some sort of indemnification from IP issues.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
I mean, should they not want $699 from every Intel CPU user...
Of course AMD too (PowerNow!) and $1399 from Centrino users
You can defy gravity... for a short time
great idea but there's too much prior art ;)
There's another possible reason for suing the secondary businesses though. To create a sort of "Korean Conflict" out of it. In Korea the real belligerants were America and China, but by fighting the war through Korea and on Korean soil neither America or China suffered. Korea was effectively destroyed, but so what? They "don't count" except as a power pawn of the big boys.
By suing a secondary target they "take the hit," but as the issue is one of someone else's IP that someone else is inevitablly drawn in the provide the relevant testimony. It's unavoidable.
Thus the real combatants can fight each other at arms length, either laying waste to the poor bastard in the middle, or, creating a business vassel out of them.
KFG
That explains it all. Translation: All we do is sue people.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Patent No. 6,598,148,
appears to be a divisional patent from patent No. 5,982,231, filed in 1989. In summary, the invention describes a CPU using both stack and register-based instructions which interfaces directly to DRAM memory over 32 shared address and data lines. Memory accesses are minimized by using mainly stack-based instructions and accessing memory in fast page mode. The invention is designed to minimize cost, fitting just tens of thousands of transistors into a 44-pin package, while delivering approximately 20 MIPS performance. While none of the design elements by themselves are new or unique, the particular combination chosen seems to fit the definition of a real invention that was not in existence before 1989.
The features which seem to relate to its claims of variable speed are the use of an on-board ring oscillator to drive the system clock, and memory cycle timing which automatically adjusts to the loading seen from attached memory devices. Using an on-board ring oscillator means that the system clock can be driven by a device built with process parameters identical to other devices on the chip. If CPU transistors are a little slow on a batch of chips, the ring oscillator transistors will be similarly slow and the chips will continue to work at a slower but reliable speed.
It's just not clear to me how Patriot Scientific can claim that companies like Intel are infringing on their patent. Is it because Intel's products contain technology which also happens to appear in their invention, but which they themselves did not invent? None of the individual technologies used in the Patriot device originated with them, and it appears that only the specific combination of those technologies described in the patent application would have qualified it for approval. However, the patent claims are written in such a way as to seemingly describe a much broader range of CPU designs, many examples of which were certainly in existence before even the original patent application by Patriot was filed.
I've seen it stated that the claims are the only important part of a patent. That seems to be the big problem with this particular patent. What happens when a legitimate invention is granted a patent with overly broad claims? Some patents are written with claims that include a range of claims, some very specific and some very broad, on the assumption that it's better to aim for as much as possible and settle for what you can get. This particular patent seems to have only broad claims. Does that make it easier or harder to try and overturn?
Someone tried to do this with the british government long ago. He dug a tunnel under their building and tried to blow it up, he was killed... most painfully... and now we celebrate it here in NZ every 5th of November with fireworks. What I want to know is are we celebrating that he tried to blow it up, or that he failed? If it is because he failed, then why celebrate by blowing things (all-be-it rather small things) up?
Karma? Hey I just call it as I see it.
Simply having a new/good idea should not be a lottery ticket...
...nor should it be a license to impose a tax on others that come up with the same or similar idea independantly.
Why not?
I agree with you there.
Because they are trying to sell their idea to people who have already thought of it on their own (or customers of those people)?
No, "they" are not. A morally depraved portion of them are. That doesn't make the whole system bad.
The purpose of the patent system is to promote progress. If the system no longer does that than maybe it has outlived it's usefullness. The system no longer does that, eh? Meaning there is no significant number of good, well-deserved patents anymore? Too few good patents to justifiy the patent system? I think not.
If patents are bad because some people abuse them, then by that logic, P2P is bad because some people abuse it.
I think we celebrate 'cause he's, like, a guy named Guy, you know? I mean, that's pretty gnarly, man.
If someone steals a TV, then goes and sells it to a resale shop, do we consider the owner of the resale shop to be a TV thief?
Then why the FUCK do we hold the reseller of a product they neither designed nor manufactured liable for patent infringement?
If there were any sense at all to the American legal system, there wouldn't be this stupid tangle of a case because it would never make it to a judge - the court's clerk would be allowed to immediately burn the motion and sprinkle its ashes in whatever drug and cleaning agent cocktail the company's lawyer was drinking at the time.
Please correct this. The company name is Fujitsu and after IBM and HP it is the third largest IT company in the world.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Until now, the major corporations used patents mainly to keep the small guy out of the market, and by cross-licensing ensured that they didn't have to fear anything from each other. Here we have a firm that, by its own admission, lives by litigation. So offering them a cross-licensing deal doesn't work. A firm that holds just ONE key patent, but doesn't need that patent (and patents held by others) for its products, is immune to the cross-licensing snare, and can cause a whole lot of trouble for the big guys.
I think that if a few more companies get into the litigation business this way, the molochs will start using their influence to get the patenting system overturned. Of course, the fact that Patriot is sueing Japanese firms and not American ones, may be an indication that they are afraid of exactly that. But I have no worries that IBM, Intel and their peers won't catch on.
This exampe shows how important it will be to create a more effcient patent system in the world.
Economists are very critical about the patent system at large, but I believe the quality of patents has to improved, the quantitiy has to be reduced. A way to do so it to set high standards,
But in the WIPO the lawyer community drafts extension to patentability. Patent law is not evil per se, but in dynamic industries it does not suit. Patents were never designed for services. In Europe FFII and many other organisations were able to build a mature counter-force to the lawyer's lobby groups. However they are in the international and governmental institutions as experts and design their own patent law.
How to get rid of bad patents? can therefore be translated to "How to create balance in patent legislation?". It makes little sense to hunt down trivial patents. The bugs are in the patent system and have to be fixed. Patent attorneys are not intrested in a working patent system.
What to do?
1. Get organized. there are several US organisation, but there is not real US movement.
There is a very low-traffic US mailing list of FFII, JOIN.
2. Support petitions such as http://www.noepatents.org
3. Help to defend the European directive in Brussels (there will be a FFII conference in April)
4. Provide content and opinion articles about patent inflation on the internet.
The whole process is really bad.
I'm not defending Patriot but I think the reason that you get litigation only companies going after big companies is created by the patent process.
A small company with a few influential patents would be silly to try and stay in the technology business once they entered a legal dispute with a bigger company. If I have 2 patents and I sue you, I'm going to be counter sued and there are going to be patents I haven't considered that will force me to close my business. Bigger portfolios of patents will shut down active companies. Before you sue a bigger portfolio you have to shut down your own company to protect against countersuits.
The system doesn't serve anyone but lawyers.
You know they are a bunch of lawyers when they have a menu option called "Intellectual Property" under products. That is not a product. They should be thrown out of court. Besides, everyone knows the aliens invented the transistors for us :D
My 10 year old son runs Linux and codes html in a text editor, and is learning C++. I am taking away his computer, buying him a weight set and teaching him how to beat up other kids for lunch money. Then he can go to law school and become an IP Attorney. I don't want my son to be trampled by the bullies and the Idiots. If you can't fight `em join `em
The patent at issue involves on-chip clocking technology.
So this is all about the technology of a processor controlling its own clock speed, wich was integrated into Intel's processors only over the last few years (AFAIK - but i'm not a hardware specialist). So, Intel's chips may or may not infringe on those patens, an the patents may or may not be trivial, but it just isn't as easy as saying "Intel processors have been around for much longer".
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this 120 chars is too small to contain.
The main vulnerability to which they leave themselves open is small upstarts like this: companies that aren't really producing anything other than patent infringement lawsuits, and thus don't have any incentive to cross-license. The large company usually has little choice but to either license the patent (if it looks like the cheaper option), or slug it out in court, hoping to drag the proceedings on long enough that the small party runs out of cash and drops it. Take Eolas for example: Microsoft still have a half-billion dollar ruling against them with regards to Eolas, and there's no opportunity for a patent infringement countersuit. Even IBM is vulnerable to this kind of attack, so don't be too sure they're overjoyed with the status quo.
proof, n. A demonstration that a conclusion is implied by certain premises and axioms.
The patent application is very specific about using a ring oscillator to control the processor clock. Most processors use PLL (phase locked loop) devices to control their clock frequency.
Typically only asynchronous CPUs are clocked by free-running ring oscillators. Almost all CPUs on the market, including embedded CPUs, are synchronous designs and they come in fixed speed grades, which makes PLL clocking very attractive.
Even with PLLs you can vary the clock speed, e.g. when you detect that the chip is too hot or when the work load is low the CPU clock can be scaled down in discrete steps.
A ring oscillator provides a non-discrete (continue) frequency range, but on the downside its clock frequency is very unstable compared to PLLs, which is bad for synchronous designs.
There is also prior art: the early MIPS processor implementations had a free running multiplier, which operated as fast as the silicon would allow, even though the rest of the CPU was clocked at a fixed frequency.
In summary: this patent is not worth a lot.
Please share whatever extra information you got that allowed you to arrive at the conclusion that this patent is trivial or obvious. All I got from the article was that it has something to do with on-chip clocking, which may be done in a clever/nonobvious way.
So what's your source?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I tried submitting this last week when I saw the article in the Union Tribune because the rhetoric coming from Patriot sounds disgustingly like the crap spewing from SCO.
Here are some choice quotes from the article:
"It would suggest that every PC manufactured after 1994 or 1995 is benefiting from this technology," Wallin said. As the company put it in a recent news release, "It is now time for Patriot Scientific and its shareholders to be properly remunerated."
Wallin added, "This sounds terrible, but we intend to get around to everybody."
Intel is taking action already. They have filed suit against Patriot to prevent Patriot from threatening them.
Guy faulkes and his gang were trying to blow up the King and Parliment at the same time. They were doing it for religious reasons, but it was still pretty anarchic. I treat fireworks night as a tribute to their efforts.
:-)
If someone steals a TV, then goes and sells it to a resale shop, do we consider the owner of the resale shop to be a TV thief?No, we call him an idiot for buying stolen goods, which afaik is considered in most countries to be a crime as severe as the actual theft itself. Whether or not the buying party is aware of the theft is mostly irrelevant.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
PAtent attorneys alsways benefit from patents. And they design the law. The current patent system is known to be inefficient. Software shall better be not protected by patents. The big man /small guy scheme is wrong, but the market situation is changed in favour of Large corporations and "small" patent privateers
Look, who has the clout in congress to get the patent mess cleaned up? Big companies.
The clout in Congress is had by whomever gives the most money. And who is that? Lawyers and law firms.
I really don't know about the merits (or lack thereof) of this particular case, but the sad fact is that without a *major* upheaval in our society, we will continue down this road of greater and greater amounts of our resources going to these types efforts that IMHO are no better than mob extortion schemes.
What it comes down to is people placing their own personal wants (greed) above the good of the community. But what do we expect from a society and a culture that increasingly makes personal fulfillment its god?
It's easier to wear the spandex than to do the crunches. --David Lee Roth
I'm not even sure the invention is necessarily patentable. The systems they describe aren't really revolutionary, but more like something any competent IC designer will come up with independantly. Come on, a ring oscillator? Synchronous memory access? This stuff is so common, it's a joke. And I'm sure it was all developed in a "clean room" environment as a by-product of any processor design. It's not like chip designers have the time to go through USPTO filings fishing for ideas.
At least, I assume they do, considering that IBM has ~25,000 active patents
Don't assume anything. Companys like IBM file "defensive" patents all the time just to keep from being sued by little guys.
About 75% of the patent nightmares we've seen lately are from the tech bubble where high end companys go down the toilet. The decades of defensive patents become the best hope for survival and a new wave of patent lawsutes washes over the landscape.
I'm sure the surviving tech giants are sick and tired of not only having to file new patents but also for being sued by former giants who couldn't survive.
I don't actually exist.
Since I bought one of their chips a few years ago, perhaps I can shed a little light on their product.
It was the first Java chip, previously a Forth chip. I know it was in use in many medical devices. Later, I bought a Dallas Semiconductor TINI board... wonder why they aren't being sued too...
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
then, we'll go back to killing lawyers.
This is my sig.
the just recieved the patent, It may have been in 'patent pending'* stage for a long while.
/. makes it sound.
*the time between when you have submitted they recieved your patent application, and the time it is approved.
Probably it's crap, but it's more complex then how
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
then the cost to file a patent would go through the roof. You can file for a patent for just a few hundred dollars. You do it your way, and it would become many Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars to file.
This office just says, we got this at this date.
Then there is the fact that it would be a never ending process. You file, the USPTO spends 10's of years looking for prior art, and still can't be sure there isn't some other person running some tiny business somewhere that will claim prior art.
Now, who is getting sued? MAJOR companies. Who can afford to defend them selveds against these clains? MAJOR companies.
If this is bogus, it will go away. If it is not bogus, then this company will make some money.
Impact to the consume? negligable.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Specialize in patent or contract law. There's not a whole lot of money in criminal law.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
This sounds awfully familiar. Where have I heard this. Dang! It's right on the tip of my tongue. Can anybody help me out? This'll be bugging me all day.
:-)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
What needs to happen is these "Patent" companies loose big in a few lawsuits and go under.. So when a company does go out and try to "Inforce IP rights" Thier stock value plummets.. So it would leave nothing but well founded IP claims and heaven forbid Notices to companies when they start selling technology that has potential IP right infringement and get it all sorted out before the product with potential of IP infringement goes mainstream.
Companies knowing that there is IP infringement taking place and not communicating with companies that are potentially infringing on thier IP should loose the ability to sue these companies for infringing. If a product is in the mainstream that does contain infringed IP there should be a grace period where time to remedy is given unless it can be demonstrated that the infringment was done with full or partial knowladge of its potential for infringment.
It just seems to be the easiest way to due business these days as you can file and obtain board patents and sit on your hands till its well into the mainstream then sue everyone(well people that make money on it anyways) without cost of actualy development or marketing and associated costs with possible product failure. So it would seem that is would be the best business practice for maximizing profit margins when you don't actually need to do anything but have a team of high priced lawyers and a good engineering teams that have a good feel for the marketplace and what technologies will hit the mainstream and how to capitilize on them trough broad sweeping patents that will cover the core essential mechanisms that these technologies will require to properly function.
There shuold be some legal mechanisms put in place to prevent the IP equivilant of "Cyber Squatters" to domain names... If companies file and obtains patents for technologies they have little or no interest in bringing to the market they have no right to prevent anyone else from doing so or taking legal action against companies that invest/develop/market these technologies.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
IBM and other compaines that make patents are trying to protect what they spend millions of dollars creating in attempts to sell and license the technology.
Problem is that a lot of compaines are patenting very broad ideas without any innovation. Wouldn't it be great to have a PDA built into a cell phone? Let's patent the idea and wait till somebody creates the device, then sue the shit out of them for copying our IP. I believe that there was a slashdot article on the subject not too long ago.
The patent office needs to see those cases where there are ideas without innovation and refuse to issue the patent untill something of value comes out.
nothing has yet come along worthy of the next name ... Sexium!
No. Following penta- (Greek origin) is hexa-. Following quint- is sex-.
The ultimate culprit is a pervasive enterprise business model that's obsessed with numbers, and fuck all the subtle hard-to-measure factors that go with growing a sustainable business. Which is not, as it happens, totally unconnected with the whole terrorist thing. The most deadly terrorist groups, such as Al Qaida, seem to be obsessed with bringing down this very same economic establishment.
In Japanese, "tu" and "tsu" are the same thing. Likewise, with "si" and "shi", with "zi" and "ji", with "ti" and "chi", and with "hu" and "fu". It all depends on the method of romanization. Word processors prefer the former of each pair because it matches the overall structure of Japanese syllables; on the other hand, the latter of each pair, called "Hepburn" romanization, more closely matches the approximate English equivalent of each sound. You do have a point, however, that most Japanese firms that sell in Europe and North America use the Hepburn romanization, such as Toshiba and Fujitsu (which is something like "Huzitu" in wapuro).
not loose, lose
looser
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Is that even illegal?
Most of the companies that file these lawsuits are one-trick ponies: They own a patent or so, and their business is filing lawsuits. That's why they don't need to worry about countersuits, e.g.
... that they had no knowledge of the patent, and that it was an independant invention (and frequently the only obvious way to solve the problem) is irrelevant. But at least IBM doesn't try to put them out of business. That's what makes them "good guys" in this area. (So imagine what the ordinary usage is.)
Other examples are companies that have seen their business go south, and are desperately hanging on. Desperately enough that they aren't concerned about their current customers, but are willing to do anything for an influx of cash. (Imagine if SCO had some real IP, like a significant patent.)
Patents are an evil. In areas where there is a large up-front investment, one can argue that they are a necessary evil, but the remain evil. And they encourage businesses to cause it to require even more up-front costs before they can consider competing. (Granted, they were inclined to this malicious act anyway, patents give them additional inducement.)
Even companies that generally play fair (e.g., IBM) don't use their patents in a strictly defensive manner. IBM is well know for finding a patent that applies in a niche, and charging companies a percentage
OTOH, IBM would lose significant revenue if this stream were cut. Not a huge amount, but the costs to them of this revenue is (relatively) trivial. It's nearly free money, as they would need the patents anyway for defensive purposes.
Conclusion: Don't count on IBM to push for a good solution. They may well not fight it, and they may not push for a bad solution, but they've adapted quite nicely to earning cash in the current environment, and have no interest in seeing it overthrown. If they don't fight to keep it, it's because they are what passes for "good guys".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Chuck Moore is one of the two inventors. Chuck is the inventor of Forth, and has devoted the last 30 years or so to devising Forth microprocessors. He is still at it. Although unfortunately he has been surrounded by kooks most of his career, he is a visionary and a very serious guy. Most of what he has accomplished goes against the grain of both the hardware and software industries, so he never got much respect and has collected a bunch of dopey followers.
I don't know if Chuck has any residual financial interest in Patriot. I suspect not. But if he did get something out of this that would be great, because he's a real inventor and he deserves it.
This patent describes a Forth micro which incorporates a variable speed clock. The clock is implemented using a ring oscillator, and doesn't use an external frequency reference such as a crystal. The clock rate varies continuously depending on the temperature, voltage, and even the quality of the process used to fab the particular chip. Thus it gets the maximum available performance out of the CPU/Dynamic RAM combination which is implemented on that one chip. If the alleged infringers are using this technique in their embedded micros, then Patriot may have a case.
The patent is a division of one filed in 1989 and appears to be a decent patent. The problem with the guys at Patriot is that they are claiming far more than what is actually granted. The patent does not claim the ablility to run a CPU at various clock speeds, or to run the CPU at some multiple of the main memory.
Well, there's two ways they could handle it - which do you think they'll chose?
..
1. Spend money on lobbyists and donations, meet with politicians, bitch and moan, for policy that will ultimately weaken their own patents.
OR.
2. Buy the company that has the patent that's trying to sue them, and then go sue everybody else.
hmmmmmm. .
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Buddy, IBM invented this phony patent business. They made it a common practice starting ~30 years ago to walk into startup companies with random patents and threaten to sue. Even when the startups pointed out that none of the patents the IBM lawyer brought were even remotely close to what the startup was doing, the lawyer would say something along the lines of "Look, we have 25k active patents. We'll find a half dozen that are close enough and sue you using those unless you give us X" where X was some substantial financial settlement or a crosslicensing agreement. I like patents because without them there would be no incentive for research or establishing new markets, but IBM has long been the king of ridiculous patent abuses. The media just doesn't report on them because they don't pay attention to the press releases of startups, if the startups even make press releases. IBM doesn't brag about their abuses because when the shoe is on the other foot they can cry to the media and portray the suit, even if it is legitimate, to their potential stockholders and jurors as petty and frivolous...
Sticking two existing things together and calling it something new has a long history. The guy who first stuck an erasor on the end of a pencil (named Hymen Lipman -- I'm not making this up!) got a U.S. patent on it! It was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court because a pencil manufacturer decided to fight it.
More on-topic, what gives these guys the right to sue Intel's customers even if Intel is infringing their patent? They should be suing Intel itself. It's sort of like SCO threatening to sue Linux users. I can't believe the judge hasn't just thrown Patriot's case out.
of Woodside, CA.
There is a Charles H Moore of Woodside CA that invented the FORTH language, which is one of my favorites. Could it be the same man?
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
" Look, who has the clout in congress to get the patent mess cleaned up? Big companies. Thus, the fastest way to clean it up, have big companies get harassed with expensive lawsuits like this. A lot. If Intel, Microsoft, IBM, etc., waste enough money fighting stupid patents (note - I know nothing about the Patriot patents, they may or may not be stupid), then you can bet that things will change."
You forget that trial lawyers donate a lot of money to politicians, particularly Democrats. They have as much lobby power as big companies.
Vote for Pedro
This patent looks like a RISC processor patent, a couple of decades too late. It's a joke and will be struck down in court, if their is any sanity left in this world.
Vote for Pedro
Inventions do not require that any or all of their components be unique or revolutionary in design. Combining existing devices in original ways to produce something new is allowed. Nor does the resulting functionality have to be something never seen before. An invention can also be designed to do things done by other inventions, maybe just a little better. To think otherwise would be like saying that no patents should ever be issued for any mechanical device incorporating levers, gears, bearings, shafts, etc., because these are all known technologies that anyone skilled in the art should be aware of. It's not the individual pieces that matter, but how they are used in combination.
On their face, the Patriot patents certainly seem to describe a class of processor with specific features and details sufficient to qualify for designation as an invention. The troubling aspect is that the claims of the patents can be construed to cover many other processors developed by other vendors which have little in common with the actual invention described.
It was him who used histerya and turned the American legal system into a venue of "protecting the little guy" where the assumed "little guy" is the assumed virtuous victim by just being "little guy" versus "huge evil corporation" ( here is an excellent example: asbestos. Just look at the linked articles ).
5 114,37 1294,00.html
"Asbestos: The $200 Billion Miscarriage of Justice," by Roger Parloff.
Fortune March 4, 2002
http://www.fortune.com/fortune/articles/0,1
http://www.triallawyersinc.com/html/part05.html
And "damages" are determined not by the actual damage, but by the defendent's worth. Brainwashed idiots out of the general public do it out of fears to the cheer of Naderistic zealots and greedy lawyers.
Thus, anyone is a game in this game of chance.
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
That most of the Government is made up of lawyers, and ex-lawyers turned politicians.
Likewise with the higherups in the Military.
I say it's not a bad idea.
Erm. Ok, forgive me for pointing out the absurdity of the (non)joke above. It obviously wasn't redundant to the poster. Made me laugh my ass off, in fact. :)
"Wallin added that his company has had settlement talks with all five of the vendors it has sued, but he wouldn't comment on specifics."
I like this quote too, let me paraphrase: [We went and harassed them, but they wouldn't pay up, so now we'll try to bully them in court!]
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
...just like SCO. Patriot Scientific at one time produced this nifty little Forth based CPU. Then they started making these Java based CPUs. Nobody seems to have bought many if any of their product offerings throughought the Java CPU period.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
great idea but there's too much prior art
Source please?
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