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Intel Sued for Patent Infringement
mfh writes "All Computers Inc. has filed suit against Intel for infringing on US Patent (5,506,981). Apparently Intel utilized patent-conflicting circuitry to determine the frequency of the input signal to the microprocessor, including Pentium processors. All Computers is asking for the tidy sum of $500 million USD."
With the Eolas victory, this and other previous lawsuits, you'd think that the big guys would push for the ending of patents in their industry. It's not like they have much to lose. Patent machines couldn't come after them and they'd not lose their position in the marketplace.
I have always had a problem with patents (not industry specific protections like for pharmaceuticals) because I don't believe ideas and methods should be property. As a Christian I find the idea that humans invent knowledge to be ludicrous and offensive. Copyrights can encourage creativity, patents just encourage people to make a product then rape and pillage their industry.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
So either these guys are gonna be the SCO of the semi-conductor world, or their crack is pretty good.
Will wank off Linus Torvalds for fame.
$500 million might be enough to get this changed; it might be cheaper to bribe enough Senators to get a bill through.
Coke is filing suit against Pepsi for making a drink with sugar and carbonation and Thomas Edison's grandson is filing suit against GE for using his grandfather's invention of electricity in many of their products without Edison's written permission. I'm really begining to take more interest in the few companies that actually work instead of trying to sue to get ahead.
You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test. - George W. Bush
It looks like the patent is describing any method of running hardware components at speeds faster than the frequency line on the board.
.. although I can't recall when they were released.
This vaugly could be anything including having a clock multiplier on the CPU (Look out AMD, Cyrix, Transmeta, VIA, HP, IBM, Apple, anyone else!) however as it was only filed in '93 I think intel can claim prior art with this, given the 80486 DX2/4 used frequency multipliers
That aside, its now friday afternoon and its time to clock watch to 5pm!
Music is everybody's possession.
It's only publishers who think that people own it.
Fuck Beta
~John Lenno
Because someone will own a piece of every idea.
And people will wonder why the US falls behind in tech.
I see that as what will break the camel's back.
As soon as areas in Asia keep bounding ahead, further and further, and the US is dragged under by constant patent battles (except for the big 2 or 3 megacorps with patents... patents that don't apply in Asia anyway) then something will have to be done. Things will be changed with legislation, or they'll fall apart.
Either way, it can't be kept up indefinitely
It's the 10 year wait that bothers me. If they'd have filed suit the first year and won then the damages would've been a lot smaller and Intel would either license the technology or develop something different. This tactic while not new (think of the GIF patent - wait till something is commodotized then send out the lawyers) is mean spirited.
I've got a bunch of patents (through the company I work for) in the semi-conductor industry and had to defend one once. The violation was caught early, a licensing offer was made but refused and then the lawyers were called in. Other cases that co-workers have been involved with are either similar or cases where technology is used as a bargaining chip. "Shit. We are violating your i.p., we just happened to notice that you're using works derived from our patents X, Y and Z. How about we cut a deal?"
If the company I'm working for behaved in this manner it'd be a negative influence on my longevity here. It by itself might not be enough to make me leave but there's a point where enough negatives accumulate to a desire to change employers.
Chris Kuivenhoven is a thief, beware
I had a professor tell me this story, and never bothered to go back through and check on the truth, but I assume it to be true :) ;-)
He said that Bell labs actully had to wait several years for a patent on the idea of an Field Effect Transistor (FET) to expire before trying to create their own. However, it was while they were trying to create the FET that the BJT was mistakenly invented.
Just through it was an interesting story about the effects that pattents have on society.. Can you imagine where the computer world might be if we'd gotten the transistor 5 years earlier or even more? It's an exciting thing to think about, and raises questions about patents.. Perhaps we could have cured cancer with that extra computing power.. Maybe we could have cured AIDs.. Or maybe our video games would be that much cooler
Patents aren't totally useless, but they way in which they're being used nowadays is kind of dangerous.
Personally, I think patents should only be issuable to people (individually, or groups), not companies or corporations (even though they have "person" status), and if licenses are offered, they should have to be same for every licensee.
This would still offer the protection and encouragment to independant inventors, which is why the patent system was designed. In fact, it would offer active discouragement to companies to seek patents on their research, as licensing would have to made available on equal terms.
Competition would be increased, as larger companies don't have to worry about lawyers or defensive patents, and would have the legal go ahead to emulate or improve their competitors.
This would also cut down on bogus patents, because, suddenly, all companies who wish to use a tech would have incentive to root out prior art for original ideas. In addition, patent submarining (like the whole JEDEC-RAMBUS fiasco), should be decreased, because the actual submission process for use would constitute prior art!
Result: today, we're just two votes short of blocking the controversial software patent directive.
We're now at a stage were even the smallest European countries can make a difference! If any small country, who so far has voted yes, changes its vote into no or abstain, we can send back the proposal to COREP, and prevent the worst from happening.
Say no to software patents.
>f you invent a method of a frequency multiplier because you need to use one in 4Mhz steps, it is reasonable that your patent would also cover someone using an identical implementation except with 33Mhz steps
That does not sound unreasonable. But when that is the case, *why* does the original patent so explicitly specify the frequency to be 4 MHz??
I was amazed when I read that. I would not expect such an implementation detail to be specified in a patent.
It is an interesting invention to have a PLL-driven frequency multiplier as a clock source for a microprocessor (although such a PLL by itself, and its use to multiply a reference frequency by some factor, is of course a pre-existing invention).
The patent does not say anything about the input and output frequency, but it does mention the 4 MHz intermediate.
To me, it seems like an integral part of the claims. Probably one that should not have been included...