Slashdot Mirror
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."
Did anyone notice that the details are missing in the lawsuit? I read the patent and it I couldn't tell if they were seeking rights to the theory of relativity or dual processor technology. I suspect its speed step technology but who knows. Law cases are getting really thin now-a-days.
We need one. Please!
You know what I miss? Leeches.
This looks like it covers something more like the old "DX2" overdrive chips and things, where you install a second chip to upgrade the first. Makes you wonder why they didn't try to sue years ago.
That's just from my preliminary reading though.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Because someone will own a piece of every idea.
And people will wonder why the US falls behind in tech.
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
At least this sort of thing can't happen in Europe. Oh wait....
Integraph has just recently gotten Intel to pay them a large sum of money for patent infringment on, you guessed it, the pentium processor. In their case it involved the technology with the memory. Integraph is now off to sue everyone who used the chips who were not covered under the Intel deal. They just got a settlement from Gateway, and are supposedly aiming at HP next.
I imagine that the success that Integraph has obtained, which was after a very long, drawn out battle that took years, has given this company the idea that they can indeed win a suit against Intel, and given the precedent of the Integraph case, far quicker than Integraph.
If you can't beat them, embrace and extend them.
Step 1: Patent generic idea
Step 2: Wait a few years for people to adopt it
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Profit!!
I'm waiting to sue for my patent "eating food whilst surfing the internet". I'm gonna be rich beyond my wildest dreams!
Its called Groklaw!
are you sick of irony too?
> 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.
I agree with both of these sentiments. The universe has existed far longer than humanity, and therefore it is totally impossible for us to invent anything beyond method, and all methods are available to us since the dawn of time. While I may be Christian, I am a science-based one; ie: the Bible is a good reference for parable and theories for understanding, and I believe that is the purpose of the tome.
That said, the patents seem to go against the scientific flow of time, by blocking inventions that build on the history of human science and discovery.
Why we have to reinvent the wheel every time we want to build a useful product or service is why we are evolving slower than we could. Darwin said that impediments in evolution, or road blocks, must be removed for a species to adapt and overcome. Are we going to adapt? To me, patents infringe on life and our chances of survival as a species.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
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
I'm sorry, but this REALLY needs to be done. Moderators, please activate your social justice circuitry before modding this.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, America fucks YOU!
Yakov Smirnov is a genius. I love this country! Thank you.
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
What people want is a section like Apache, Apple, Games, etc. for legal items. That way, if the talk of lawyers, lawsuits, etc. nauseates them, they can block that section.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
4Mhz is mentioned further down as a more specific implemention of this general claim [in (4)].
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.
IANAL but..
From reading the patent, It appears to Me that this patent was on a method of installing CPU upgrades to a computer. For example those cards that took a 386 to a 486 or allowed you to exchange the CPU for a faster one and increase the clock speed. These types of cards are about useless anymore! Besides, this patent was applied for in 1993 - I am VERY sure there is prior art. I can remember these types of upgrades as early as 1986. Hell, NEC was offering upgrades as early as 1981, albeit not this type, but it DID upgrade the CPU and increase the clock speed. It was that old V20 CPU and a clock crystal to upgrade your 8088 PC and increase the clock from 4.77mhz to 8mhz. (Hmm.... I* wonder who else on here actually used one of those besides Me?)
It'll be interesting to see how this playes out, but seems to me that this is a poor attempt by a company that has no market anymore to get a few quick bucks. --- Hey, I wonder if any SCO people are thier relatives ?!?
Does it benefit society to allow people to restrict who can build on their ideas?
If you add "for a limited time" to your question, then yes, it does. It gives a reason for people to create and, more importantly, to publish. If there is a fear the effort put into creation will come to nothing but the financial enrichment of somebody else better able to exploit an idea, the idea may never be published, but kept secret. Don't forget that patents contain (or are supposed to anyway) full documentation of how to reproduce an invention, and that document becomes public domain at the end of the term. Would people publish their ideas as frequently if it weren't for patents?
Please don't take my comments as a defence of the current US patent system, but of the patent concept in general. It's a good idea, but a flawed implementation. If I were to change it, along with improving the review process I'd try to work in compulsory licenses and shorter terms...
Is this patent overly broad. I mentioned in another post it appears to be a patent on a PLL circuit. However, since all chips need to sync to another signal, and CPUs / GPUs in particular use a multiple of the host signal, every processor produced by everyone in the PC industry is potentially infringing.
The USPTO basically allowed someone to patent the synchronous computer. Read the text of the patent, it reads like a 7th graders description of how a PC works.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Only via mega victims/abuse will there be patent law reform.
It was a real pity BT didn't succeed with it's hyperlink patent suit - the mega-economies would've reformed their patent laws quick smart if BT had succeeded.
Really the more outrageous the suit & the bigger the defendents, the better off we all are in the long run.
Fact is law reform virtually only occures if the big end of town are victims of bad laws.