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HP Pays Intergraph $141m to Settle Patent Dispute
foxed writes "HP
has settled a patent dispute with Intergraph. Intergraph claim the caching in Intel's Pentium processors violates their patent. Intel, AMD, Dell and Gateway made similar settlements last year."
Does anyone know which patent it actually was, just so we can look at it and see how idiotic it is?
I'm a small OEM and have shipped a few intel processor based machines... Am I liable to pay a fine too?
Not had the bill yet, if so....
No Norm, those are your safety glasses; I'll wear my own thanks...
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
You can send the check directly to me, since I am representing the plaintiff in this case.
We'll give a 10% discount for cash.
I'll stop by around 10 o'clock to pick up the cash.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Intergraph's patents are numbers 4,899,275, 4,933,835 and 5,091,846.
Just don't ask me what any of that means...
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
"We got to pray to avoid patents today"... "we got to pray, prayyyyyy." "We got to PRAY, prayyyyyy."
Who the fuck cares? I'm sure there are better topics in submission queue. And BTW - it is daytime in Europe now. There's been no much stories since early morning here. Is /. only for Californians? Really - OSDN - implement a stories selection/voting public process like for comments and fire the "editors" like the one in subject. (Mod at will).
The article says that Intergraph is suing HP et al. for selling products that contain a product that infringed upon the patent (Pentium Processors).
How about in other fields, such as food.
A farmer accidently grows patented/copywrited (GM?) corn in his field. Sells it to a cereal company that turns it into corn flakes. Can the corn seed patent owners sue the cereal company? How about the baker that is making stuff using the cereal company's product?
Im not trolling... But seriously, patents need to be banned. It's crippling the IT world.
In my country, there is a phone company called telkom. They make BILLIONS in profit every year. The reason for this is that our government has granted monopoly rights to the phone company. It sucks!
The reason they grant them monopolism is because 80% of the government has shares in the damn company, causing the rest of the country to be screwed as a result.
Patents are the same - the hurt local and global economies by enabling monopolism.
Yeah, and profit in a big way sometimes... According to the article, Intergraph has raked in over $860 million in IP related cases. Sue everyone!
HP is very reliable... look at their reputation for scientific instruments etc.
:> that's another matter. I would guess (INAL) that the arguement goes HP used Intel Pentiums. Intel Pentiums violated the patent. HP should have checked before using the Pentiums if any such violations etc existed - any if they did and intel said no then liability would pass to intel - if they didn't then they're liable for not carrying out due diligence.
As for how HP is LIABLE
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
or else we'll have to pay,paaaaaaaaaaaaay
I completely agree with the original thread reply's subject. Demand tort reform. But, Who will we demand it from? The Lawmakers? They are a majority of lawyers. "11 million dollars in legal expenses." It's sickening.
FTA: "Under the deal, HP has a license for all Intergraph patents for any use, while Intergraph has access to HP patents in specific fields in which it has products."
It seems that HP paid for more than just a dropped lawsuit. They also paid for the use of a lot of patents.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The short answer is yes (IANAL but I read groklaw :-))
... inventors don't need monopolies to exploit their ideas, monopolies are terrible for markets, and monopolies on ideas and invention any progress built upon those ideas or inventions) ... software users exist in almost every home, hence, like the new copyright extentions of the late 20th and early 21st century, patent lawsuits can be extended all the way down to a 12-year old using a program on her PC or Mac that violates some speculator's patent on [insert obvious idea here].
... until you look closer and realize that, on average, it costs $1 million dollars to overturn a single patent, an amount of money few mere mortals have, and most small businesses can ill afford. This cost makes even invalid patents effectively valid, as so few people and companies can afford the expense of correcting the patent offices negligence, and will be forced to pay the shakedown money (or cease using/making the software/device that allegedly infringes, or both) instead.
My understanding, from everything I've read, is that patent holders can sue ANYONE making unauthorized use of their patent, from the manufacturer down to the end user. Mostly they go after manufacturers and resellers (note that some of those who settled with the holder of this particularly noxious patent were Intel RESELLERS, not chip manufacturers).
This is one of the things that makes software patents even worse than most other patents (which are themselve a bad idea
Pro-patent lobbiest and apologists will argue that you can always go to court to overturn the patent with prior art if it is truly illegitamate (thereby neatly avoiding the entire point of how terrible patents are for anyone who cares about technological and human progress), and that's true as far as it goes
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Eric Schmidt once said in a keynote address that the career of a computer scientist consists of finding new applications for caching and indirection.
These aren't the same people that made the Clipper/CLIX workstations right?
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
It is quite obvious from their cash settlements/awards that Intergraph has finally figured out what:
3. ???
is.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
That's novel, and no-one at Intel had come up with the idea before.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
"Intergraph said in a release that it expects to pay $11 million in legal expenses."..."The company created an intellectual property division in 2002 to protect its intellectual capital. Intergraph said that, since then, its IP protection and enforcement efforts have generated about $860 million in pre-tax income."
I'm sure that "classic-style" racketeer division would've cost them quite a bit less.
They damn well did. The ??? is for those of us with less than 7 figures positive in the bank ;)
Just
There is a danger of a large company stealing a small companies software idea though...
Yesterday I presented my current work of 2years as normal to yet another crowd, however our main competitor was presenting before us and decided to stay.. while I was presenting I noticed him scribbling away like mad... they are a pretty big company.. I'm me and and one other person, and I bet when there next release comes out it will have "borrowed" ideas from mine.
Not a thing I could do though. It's just a classic case of big guy about to shit on the little guy. Hell maybe there find something I've done infringes on there work and sue me.
moo
How is it frivolous? Are we supposed to be against mechanical patents now too?
Intel should offer everyone patent protection I guess. Hell I guess everyone that sells any type of part should offer patent protection.
Got Code?
"We"??? speak for yourself. This is a discussion forum. Anyway.
For what it's worth, as a trained mechanical engineer, yes, I for one AM against ALL patents. NO-ONE should have the right to stop you altering your own physical property, and selling it on in altered form, if you want to. If you want to "reward invention", then give inventors grants, don't restrict everyone else with patent monopolies just to please the few!
Intergraph Patents all relate from their own custom unix architecture that they abandoned in the early 90s (suckered into windows/intel). Their first cases involved their claim that Intel was trying to strong arm them to get their IP... and I thought their claim was very valid. Unfortunately now they seem to have made a business unit that's sole purpose is to chase suspected patent violators. Some of their other products are quite useful (mapping and GIS) though, if overpriced and underhyped.
check out http://www.intergraph.com/ip/cases.aspfor more info on the cases
and
http://www.intergraph.com/ip/tech.asp for info on how a software company ended up with all these hardware patents in the first place.
Our patent system is broken. Extortion by litigation has to stop. This is stifling innovation and crippling our economy. Absolutely, un-f'ing-believable.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
That's novel, and no-one at Intel had come up with the idea before.
Since when did Novell enter the CPU market?
moo
It's not on caching but a specific and new way of speeding it up.
The obvious candidate is pharmaceuticals, where (quite reasonably) we impose a massive regulatory load and delay development for years, and so make it much harder for someone to exploit a discovery or invention before it just becomes common currency.
Obviously IT has no such problem.
At the very least I think that the protection against independent reinvention should be reduced to some small, standard licencing fee. That would remove the more or less unbounded risk we are all taking every day now from the fact that some obscure and possibly insane patent might, properly interpreted, give someone else ownership of our work. That would seem to be a small, bounded change to the law which could be done quickly and nail 90% of the acute problem.
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
Research costs money, in some cases lot's of money. Patents guarantee that this money can be regained over time as part of the product cost. This prevents a competitor from directly copying your idea and selling it for less (they didn't have R&D costs).
In other words, without patents companies have a lot less incentive to do any sort of expensive specific research since they have little chance of making money on it.
Individual inventors would also be screwed since they also have little chance of making money of their inventions: a larger company with more money will simply copy it and sell it for less. Or maybe one of the inventor's investors or prospective investors will do it before the product is even in production.
All I know is everytime you look around some company is suing some other company for some violation of ip or patent. Most of these suits seem to be aimed at stiffling innovation by competing companies and controlling progress until the original company is convinced it has milked the patent or ip for every single dollar the marketing department can acquire. Then, of course we see the company that has produced NOTHING during it's entire existence, save one thought scrawled on a napkin, and it thinks it should get millions (or billions) from companies that actually DID something with the same thought.
Meanwhile, who do you think is paying for all of these lawyers? Do you think the CEO takes a pay cut to pay for the lawsuits? I think the cost gets passed on to the consumer. So, why is it that I should be in favor of stopping frivolous personal lawsuits and not equally frivolous and costly corporate suits?
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
For what it's worth you have zero concept of business then.
"oh lets change the color of this widget." after color change "Great, now that we spent $5 changing the color, we can sell this product at half the cost of the company that spent millions researching it....oh goody"
And if you don't think that could/would happen without patents, then you are sadly mistaken.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I have little doubt that any of the companies that settled could have fought to have the patents in question invalidated through illustrations of prior art in some form or another. With enough lawyers and creative argument anything is possible.
So why didn't they is a question that many have asked? I think it's simply that if companies start battling to strip each other of their IP, then IP becomes very devalued and the cost of defending it erodes the net value even further. It is probably much easier to go with the flow and keep IP values high.
As to what the business motive for the current trend of allowing OSS projects full access to patented technology might be? Several likely motivators might influence the trend: Positive Public Image, Threat of having their IP invalidated through illustrated prior art, The liklihood that they may utilize the same OSS project which may be in suspected violation of said IP.
Like so many others, I think the patent system is being very abused. But it is to be expected, I think, as "legal == moral" in the minds of most people these days... a pity.
"oh lets change the color of this widget." after color change "Great, now that we spent $5 changing the color, we can sell this product at half the cost of the company that spent millions researching it....oh goody"
And if you don't think that could/would happen without patents, then you are sadly mistaken.
It's called competition.
What often happens is this:
Company A patents all their ideas and inventions, down to the most absurd.
Company B develops some similar technology with their own independent research (who can understand the text on patent-claims, or have the time to read the millions of bogus and unuseful claims? The directory of patents is only useful to lawyers.)
Company B becomes successful for having a superior product.
Company A sues company B for patent-infringement some years later. Company A is usually in a downturn at this point, with no good and proven products.
How are patents productive to society? Company A would develop the technology some time or later, it's usually incremental changes in existing technology which are mostly patent-free and public domain.
Software patents and litigations will kill an industry based on building and sharing on ideas. Where would programming languages be, or anything in this society, if everything was to be patented. Progress would slow down.
And the small guy who wants to produce products are squeezed out, because lawyers are expensive.
Compare this with that people will get ideas all the time, usually at different parts of the world at the same time. Patents will not make these ideas pop up any faster, only raise the barrier to implement these ideas.
Big companies never produce any ideas by themselves..
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
They're hardware patents.
Best Slashdot Co
Under your model, of no patents, what are you going to do to protect a company that spends millions of dollars and other resources (time) from the company that just waits to copy the idea?
Big companies never produce any ideas by themselves..
Come on dude, that's an idiotic (naive at best) statement. Big companies have many people working for them who produce many ideas.
,
The only part of your statement that I can agree with is where it becomes absurd when a company patents the most inane thing (especially if it has prior art).
Again, how do you propose to protect a companies investment (under a no patent system). If you rely on the goodwill of the people "well I will pay $100 because this company originated the product, instead of $50 to the other guys who copied it" then you are very naive.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Unfortunately, if Intel has to pay up, prices will go up. In the end, we all have to pay up for all these litigations and excess use of resources on legal claims.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Well, I can't really see the harm. If it's clearly labeled as, at best, worthless then who can complain when it makes their hair fall out and doesn't cure their cancer?
Of course, we could demand that any claims made for effectiveness be backed up by proper evidence from controlled tests. It would be worth putting the idea forward just to see the medical professions and drug companies shitting themselves:-).
_O_
.|< The named which can be named is not the true named
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"while I was presenting I noticed him scribbling away like mad..."
He was probably filling in his patent application on your work.
"Hell maybe there find something I've done infringes on there work and sue me."
Heh, or even decide you're infringing on your work and sue you.
Gotta love the system.
I still remember when Intergraph had the nicest technical workstations you could ask for without going RISC... too bad they really fooled themselves into thinking you can work with Wintel and yet survive on quality.
Leandro Guimarães Faria Corcete DUTRA
DA, DBA, SysAdmin, Data Modeller
GNU Project, Debian GNU/Lin
As for how HP is LIABLE :> that's another matter. I would guess (INAL) that the arguement goes HP used Intel Pentiums. Intel Pentiums violated the patent. HP should have checked before using the Pentiums if any such violations etc existed - any if they did and intel said no then liability would pass to intel - if they didn't then they're liable for not carrying out due diligence.
IANAL.
This is a bit dangerous advice. If you actually check for patent-claims, find one and still buy/sell/use/import/export/etc the product, then you're liable to TRIPPLE damages. Yes, that's right, you're punished for checking in advance!
Maybe HP can pressure Intel, but any small company can't afford to not buy anyways.
Patents are not good for society.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Damn, there's never a moderation option for +1 Troll when you need it. Great work, Mosel!
Paul Gillingwater
MBA, CISSP, CISM
My first engineering job was at the research laboratory of SKF, so I know a thing or two about patents as they apply to mechanical engineering. Even then (this was in 1993) SKF was largely doing away with their patent section, on the grounds that you didn't actually patent what you were researching any longer, as that would just tell your competition what you were up to. This enables said competiton to lay a 'patent minefield' i.e. to get a few quick patents in to block your progress, while they gear up their own research to be able to follow (or even beat) you to market.
Hence the battle cry was: "Short time to market". Not patents. With a short time to market you'll make your investement back before your competition is out of the starting blocks. And whey they get going, you've already run ahead, refining your offer, and (more importantly) got a grip (not to say lock) on the market. It's much more difficult to switch supplier once you've got going, than it is to go with the competition in the first place.
I saw this happening before my very eyes as I was there. That was the period where SKF just made their CARB rolling bearing public after much secrecy. The CARB idea was not encumbered with any patents, in that case as the idea was from the thirties and the patents had already expired before the means of producing them were available. But the pundits said that it was still doubtful if they would have spent much effort in that area even if it hadn't.
Stefan Axelsson
In Intergraph's case, Intel engineers were up against a wall circa the late 486/early 586 timeframe, and came to Intergraph for help. Intergraph opened their IP portfolio to Intel, taught the Intel engineers how to design a modern CPU, and Intel proceeded to steal the entirety of that IP portfolio - hook, line, and sinker.
Intergraph knew very little about making CPUs. They used MIPS CPUs before moving to Intel. What they were good at, was making fast buses between memory, the CPU and peripherals. They made workstations that rendered 3D in real time, way before AGP came around. Intergraph partnered with Intel because they needed cheaper processors in their platform to compete. Intel needed better memory-cpu-peripheral buses. Intergaph was to help Intel if Intel would provided details about their processors so Intergraph could make high speed buses, primarily for 3D devices. Intel never provided access to their specifications, leaving Intergraph hanging, so they sued. Then Intel used technologies that Intergraph shared with them, so they sued on patent infringement as well.
This assumes while in the patent process you cannot release your product to the market. Remember you can label your product as "patent pending" and release it to the market.
The patent process is flawed, but from my understanding, if you submit your patent first you get it looked at first. Plus it is dated. So if you submit your patent - it will be kind of hard for your competitors to insert another patent that copies some of your base ideas and claim it as their own (unless they have time machines).
Your idea also assumes that a company can get an ROI prior to the other guy releasing a clone of your product. This simply does not always happen; especially with leaks of details about the product.
At least with a patent, you can sue the company if they try and steal your product idea.
So again, how do you protect a companies ROI if they do not have a patent?
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
McAffee got a patent for displaying a map of where an incomming IP was from? Geez, some people hang some really dumb things on firewalls these days! (Unlike sound effects. ;) Besides, unless it's a protocol like TCP with a completed handshake, the IP address isn't reliable. Datagrams like UDP routinely have forged IPs.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
What is sad is that the economy and consumers will pay far, far more than $860M because of this. I would peg the cost at around $10B, because corporations will pass both the settlement money and their lawyers fees to the customer. The higher price will reduce demand and a smaller industry means less innovation and more stagnation.
The $10B number is made up on the spot, but the costs are going to exceed $860M by far. It could easily be higher than $10B.
Hm, the whole point of my OP was that if you check and find issues then you are suposed to sort things out *BEFORE* buying/shipping the product(s)...
I agree though patents are bad...
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
One thing that most articles miss is that software patents really screw anyone who even uses a computer, not just developers.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Seems to me that Intel is the bad guy in this case not USPTO... Intel swiped some tech from Intergraph and didn't pony up for it. Now we all suffer because we all "use" intel chips (and their cache) we don't just "have" them. If intel had just treated Intergraph fairly none of this would have happened!
The "use" thing is also why this feels so much like a software patent. Doesn't it seem stupid that I have basically no idea how the Pentium cache works, yet I'm infringing a patent on how it works. Patents were created to protect rights to manufacture inventions, not use of inventions.
Sure you can, but with todays fierce financial competition you'd better make your money back fast or you wont have investors. Take the SKF example. The company wanted a 22% ROI and their money back within two (count them: two) years. Otherwise the product wasn't deemed viable. So it's not a question of the state protecting SKF, they themselves don't want that kind of protection as that doesn't make financial sense.
The problem here I think is that there are patents and there are patents. Companies try to provide solutions to customers problems (i.e. fill a need). There are typically many ways of filling that need. The more broad and far reaching your patent is, the more difficult it is to make it stick (as there's likely to be more prior art). Thus, the only patents that are going to cost money to a large corporation are the ones that can be designed around (fairly easily). The overbroad ones can be fought in court successfully (and cheaply, $1-$2 million is often quoted), and hence don't enter into the equation.
Take one example from my own industry. Nokia in the early nineties patented the way of reducing stand by power consumption in mobile phone by reducing the cpu frequency. That stuck (as it was narrow application to the mobile phone problem). As such it gave Nokia a short lived advantage in stand by time, over the rest of the market. The competition scrambled to meet the same targets, in Ericsson's case by researching battery technology. It only took a year or so before they were up to the same stand by time as the current Nokia phones, and hence Nokia's invention (I use that loosely) had been neutralised. When the patent expired however, Nokia found themselves distanced by the competition, as they hadn't researched battery technology and hence when the competition could start to lower their clock frequency (from a position of strength), they had substantially better stand by times. It was Nokia's turn to scramble.
So, in general, patent or no patent, your competition will have closed the gap in two years at the latest. Hence SKF:s stance that if you haven't made back your money in two years, you're in trouble. No need for a 16-20 year patent in that case, the economy has changed since these figures were set down.
So, releasing a clone takes time and other business pressures makes that time the golden hour in which to make back your money. If you cannot, you're not going to get funding, as there are other investements that will have a better payoff.
I would say that that is true even in the pharmaceutical industry. The research money spent on Losec was made back in an instant, and the rest of the patent time is just gravy. Not pure gravy however, as the competition saw that there was money to be made here and came up with alternatives.
No, the problem with the pharmaceutical industry isn't the patent situation. It's the fact that the cost-benefit to society is different from the cost-benefit to the companies, and hence competitive capitalism (or whatever you'd call it) isn't a good model for the research into potentially useful pharmaceutical substances. Compare, it's in societies best interest to find a cure rather than a treatment (given that the cost benefit is in it, which it often is), but it's in the best interest of the industry to find a treatement, not a cure. Compare Losec, which is a treatment, not a cure.
Stefan Axelsson
No, it clearly says, 'use' ... 'or sell', not 'and sell'.
Or do you mean 'operative' as in 'most important'? I haven't really said anything else, see my other posts in this thread. Of course intergraph isn't going to go after end users, the money isn't in it. That's not saying that they couldn't.
Stefan Axelsson
I hate this level of thinking. To think that you are the only person with an idea, and that no other engineer can comprehend caching inside a processor is insanity. And then to paten this idea... It's just backwards from what I consider productive thinking, and only serves to keep lawyers employed.
So they WERE reliable while they still had Agilent, they aren't now.
This is not caching but a specific method or something along those lines. And you do know that a patent does not say "you can't use this invention for yourself" but rather "ask us, and potentially pay us, if you want to use this invention yourself".
Trivial and obvious things should not be patentable.
Here's how I read the article.
The lawsuit was against products containing Intel pentium processors. Being that it's a cache memory issue, it seems to me that the Intel processor/on-board-cache are the ones in violation here.
However, not just Intel was sued, but also several major companies which included the intel chip in their product. Follow it down the chain and maybe they could also sue "Best Buy" for products carrying the chip that violates the patent. Maybe the could sue you?
In some cases, it's not the patents themselves that are idiotic, it's how so-called "enforcement" of them can be extremely broad and thus prone to abuse. At the moment it seems an extreme case of double-dipping and beyond... that is you sue not only the source of violation but any branches from.
Scary enough to stifle US innovation? Would your company become wary if the potention of a massive lawsuit arose just because they use somebody else's technology/product? I think so... which is why we should be against this type of use of such a patent. And it's still an IT patent... with the rate of growth in IT a longstanding patent could easily be immediately profitable, but as patents compound they could ultimately be very damaging to future innovation (think 90% patented older technology in a new product 18 years from now).
The Clipper technology was designed by Schlumberger and FairChild in the mid 1980s and sold to InterGraph. There was a "sweet spot" in the early 1980s when a small R&D group of less than ten people could design and manufacture an advanced chip. This was after Conway and Mead wrote a "circuit compiler" to computer design these chips (I was drawing/taping chips on drafting boards in the 1970s) and before the number of transistors got so large that you needed a larger team to manufacture it. The Clipper proceded the SPARC and was similar in capabilities to the recently discontinued DEC-Compaq-HP Alpha chip. Intel was not even in the 32-bit market at that time. The Clipper invented several clever 32-bit circuits that other companies either reinvented or, apparently illegally, copied.
InterGraph had the same business stategy as SGI. They originally wrote CAD software. But this software was such a CPU hog, that they also made high end workstations to run the software. When Sclumberger (an oil services company) descided to get out of the chip business, InterGraph bought them. InterGraph never acheived the success of SGI and juts remained in its CAD niche.
Intergraph never used MIPS you clod, they used the Fairchild/Nationa Semi Clipper, one of the first RISC chips in the market. Also one of the first superscalars, which is what Intel stole. Intergraph later bought the processor section of Fairchild, so the Clipper technology was actually Intergraph's.
How the previous post was modded informative is beyond me, as the poster has no clue what he is talking about.
They should have checked in advance, and then either not used the patented device, or demanded that their supplier indemnify them. Yes, it would be stupid to check for patents on a technology if you're just going to use it anyway.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
To see possibilities, we need to let go of all the assumptions we have about how things "work". The current situation with huge companies is ingrained in the present system, thus any big changes will naturally have a huge impact on the entities depending on the system.
Let's take an example of cooperation and open disemination:
Like open source, scientists can (and still do) cooperate to research on things. Actually, the truly novel ideas comes from research in universities, while corporations tend to focus on how to bring a specific product based on such research. The rest becomes trade secrets..
Instead of having the focus to find ways to make the most money, such researchers will research all avenues, also just for curiosity, fun and fame.
But heavier research needs funding. You can have a mechanism to distribute this fairly based on performance and usefullness, either through a expert-group, democratic process or both. The focus will be on what is useful to society, not what appears to be good on the surface and sells to the ignorant masses. Companies may even contract researchers in order to research their issues.
More money and a good system, can distribute this wealth to the right people, not to corporations who enrich the top men and have shady agendas. In the future, going back to more academic research will seem more and more like a good idea, as companies erode the academic arena for good scientists and morale.
Actually, the current system is really siphoning on the academic fields, without giving much back to anybody.
Killing patents may work, and is not the end of the world anyways. Companies will find ways to survive, they're never guaranteed ROI or any profit, neither should they. Research will be shared by everybody.
What we don't need is a patent monopoly which hinders progress in many areas. Only the biggest players can afford this game, and often they just buy smaller companies in order to get new fresh ideas. Something is very wrong, and continuing on this road is gradually destroying our culture.
I don't claim I know this will work and obviously smarter people than I can come up with better systems. However, it did work before and we can develop it further. Of course, our current system is also a reflection of the human psyche. The greed, fear, feel of lack, hankering for more, etc, all limits us. This has increased with time, thus the current system and "culture" (dare I call it that) reflects that. This is spoon-fed back to the population through the media.
Another solution is to have different rules for patents in different arenas. E.g. software patents could be limited to 3-5 years, like Stallman has suggested. Or you could abolish software patents, since there's really no need for it.
But how can law-makers make rational decisions when we let big money rule our lives?
It's a matter of what kind of society we want to create, not just what is most efficient and mechanic. Rational choices and taking responsibility for the land we live on.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
So what do you do if Intel refuses to fix it?
I think most companies just have to take their chances, settling this in court just becomes a necessary risk. Thus making giving large companies yet another advantage over smaller companies.
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
It sounds like it's preventing people from circumventing patent liability by importing stuff manufacturerd overseas (paid for overseas too if you're creative enough with your accounting). That is, if the "sell" clause wasn't there, Intel could move their fab plants to Taiwan, violate every U.S. patent, Dell/HP/etc could buy the CPUs using Euros, ship them to the U.S., and sell them without incurring any patent liability. If the "use" clause wasn't there, you'd have a situation where foreign mail order firms could legally sell stuff to U.S. citizens that violated U.S. patents, while U.S. mail order firms could not.
Second, Intergraph was screwed by Intel in much the way that SCO was screwed by IBM. In Intergraph's case, Intel engineers were up against a wall circa the late 486/early 586 timeframe, and came to Intergraph for help. Intergraph opened their IP portfolio to Intel, taught the Intel engineers how to design a modern CPU, and Intel proceeded to steal the entirety of that IP portfolio - hook, line, and sinker.
First, IBM already had a viable Unix product since the AT&T days. Second, Montery was no where near release ready when the project was discontinued (because the market would be very tight for it). Third, the IBM suit appears to be a fishing expedition where SCO is searching for where IBM did something wrong and has yet to find it. Ulitmately the SCO case is a contract dispute and copyright infringement case.
The Intergraph case is a classic case of patent infringement. one is a duck and the other is a submarine.
-- $G
Unfortunately, in Europe, the large majority of revenue is generated from small and medium businesses.
... because the wealth is concentrated, and can be used in a coordinated lobby/bribery effort that no individual small or medium sized corporation can afford.
That's true in the US as well. Unfortunately, large corporations have political and financial cloute vastly out of proportion with their impact on the economy
The amount of wealth that would be created if the patent system were completely scrapped is mindboggling. The amount of wealth that would be created if the copyright system were reformed, with monopolies eliminated either through manditory licensing, or a redefinition of what copyright does (affords authors/publishers guaranteed income from derivative works, rather than granting a monopoly and by default banning such derivative works) is mindboggling.
But it is unlikely to happen, because those with the patent and copyright portfolios are the very cartels that wield such undo influence on our so-called "leaders," and because everyone not directly informed of the issue fears change as a default stance (a tragic human failing that has always delayed and often scuttled many a necessary reform throughout history)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Perhaps patents should be only allowed to be owned by individuals. No corporations or not individual entity and a distinct clause that you cannot force the invidual to sign an exclusive rights to the patent away to the company.
In a sense the invidual could then license the patent to other companies without retribution spreading innovation without legal restrictions.
That or it might be easier to request a physical prototype and not on paper like the olden days.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
The only problem with your "companies have to recover costs of research" argument is that most research is funded by the NSF and NIH and those funds are payed for by John Q Taxpayer.
In many instances key knowledge breakthroughs are kept secret by the researcher after their discovery. The researcher then resigns their government job, takes the key knowledge with them, and creates a startup company to profit on that key knowledge, which they patent after having "discovered" it after their startup begins "researching". Combine that trick with the congressional law which gives rights for public research to private companies, and you hve the complete picture of the corporate research scam/welfare.
Most of the retail costs of high tech products comes from high profits which feed high salaries for the upper level management. Even stupid CEO who get fired after only 9 months on the job take $26M out the door with them. The Dick Lay's of the world just have to have 7 mansions, several jets, and dozens of condos around the planet, so they need those high salaries and retirement bonsus so they can afford to maintain those basic necessities.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
It used to be people tried to win the lottery. Then they tried to buy the next big stock before it boomed. Now people try to patent everything in hopes that they can hit the jackpot.
So am I at risk here for buying Intel Pentium processors for my computers? Or from AMD?
integraph used the clipper microprocessor it was originally designed at fairchild before national semi bought fairchild. integraph bought the design team and ip.
No you havent. By publishing your work you may have the ability to overturn a granted patent in court, should you be able to afford it. Good luck on that.
You cant even protect your work against patents by patenting it; patents are granted for things that are already patented on a regular basis.
Ok, let's say I'm a real estate agent who spends all day driving potential customers around in my Mercedes. Then Ford wins a patent infringement suit against Mercedes for some gear cog or whatnot. Am I infringing on Ford's patent? Am I liable?
these people owned a patent, and had an avenue to reclaim losses.
This ois a solid patent, for advanced technology. This is not a business model patent i.e. 1 click shopping.
If you built a widget, do you think it would be OK for a company to just use it and benefit from it without paying for it?
I certianly don't.
This is what would happen, people would make col thing, then corporation would make all the money.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
the people replying to your questions are not experts, and are probably clueless about patrents except what they read on slashdot.
Also, HP paid to use many of the patents from the patent portfolio, not caching
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
not in any practical manner.
As is the case for all these stories, there is a lot you nede to pay attention to.
1) HP was suing them for patent infringement as well.
2) They did not win the case, it was settled. Probably would have lost . WHy did they settle you ask? that brings us to:
3) The settle ment ended with HP getting access to several of their patents, and they got access to some of HPs patents.
So what HP really did was buy a liscense to a patent portfolio. If the company didn't have anything they wanted, HP probably would have nailed them to the wall.
it is so ludicrious to think they could sue a consumer, that id they did you could probably defend yourself and still get them laughed out of court.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
most coutries you wouldn't get a trail at all, you would never have a recourse at all.
The SCO is abusing the system, sure, but how to we fix it woithout screwing you or I over?
The prosecution in OJs case screwed up. screwed up bad. When cast aside all the facts and boil it down to, if this glove fits, he is clearly the killer, and it APPEARS to not fit, and then you don't followup? of course he goes free.
"In what other country does every sentense also include rape?"
what the hell does that mean?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
" most coutries you wouldn't get a trail at all, you would never have a recourse at all."
Most countries? Have you ever been outside the US? Most countries have excellent legal systems. Not everyplace outside the US is a third world shithole you seem to think it is.
"what the hell does that mean?"
In the US if you get jailed for any crime you will get raped and the jail officials won't do anything about it. In the US every sentence also includes a bonus rape punishment. That's what it means.
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So i guess everyone else who purchased an intel processor is reliable for damages as well?!?! Since no one checked to see if what they bought was infringing on any patents.
Garrett
....all this settlement does is pay off the lawyers for intergraph. This backwater has-been of a company should have went under a long time ago. They think they can lay around and live off of relic patents then go right ahead. Intergraph is a joke. Anything good aobut that company was sold off a LONG time ago.
Arguments for/against patents aside....
This lawsuit & settlement make a lot of sense. Intergraphs technology for high-speed bus(es) and caching was stolen by Intel. In order for Intel to have created and sold chips using that technology, they must have had to release some or all of that intellectual property to PC manufacturers so that they could create motherboards for those processors. (Remember that caching occurs both on and off-chip).
I wouldn't be surprised if other motherboard manufacturers are next or have already settled. IBM may also be next, however it may be the one manufacturer that can defend such a lawsuit. IBM has a long history of processor, bus, and cache development for big iron, Power Series and PowerPCs that is completely unrelated to Intel's technologies or platforms, However, IBM's PC division (now owned by a Chinese company who's name I can't remember) may be just as susceptible as the other PC manufacturers.
What does surprise me is that HP, Dell, and Gateway aren't suing the pants off of Intel for negligence. If not for Intel's stealing of intellectual property and redistributing it as their own, those companies would not be payiong out millions of dollars to settle these lawsuits.
No doubt that in the narrow-margin PC business, consumers will eventually foot the bill anyway.
Ok, I just did some research into these various claims, basically when Intel settled their claims with Intergraph they left their customers out in the cold. The settlement specifically gives Intergraph the right to sue any intel customer or distributor. When AMD settled they made it part of the settlement that all of their customers were covered by the settlement.
This can be verified Here
and Here
That is amazing. I'm never buying an intel processor again, nor producing any systems based on intel hardware ever again.
Am I liable to pay a fine too?
The usual IANAL, but a lot hinges on this: Intel apparently didn't indemnify its customers against patent infringement that might apply to its processors, so its customers are liable as well, since they also used the patented technology. The one exception so far is Dell, which apparently has a different agreement than the others who have been sued so far. See Intel Settles Intergraph Patent Litigation. Here's a quote:
Not quite. Intel already has fab plants all over the world. They are still subject to U.S. patents, if for nothing else because they still have business presence here. Now, if Intel moved all operations overseas, it would make things more complicated, but it could lead to a situation of Intel chips being illegal in the U.S. (and hence, HP, etc are selling illegal products).
That's why MS complied with the EC in their antitrust case (not sure about how strong their actual business presence is in Europe)- If they refused to comply, they lose an entire market- Just like when Windows 95 was outlawed somewhere around India (and why newer versions of Windows don't have shading over different world regions- the country has a law regarding a disputed region, and how it must be referred to)
I believe that one can patent an improvement of an existing product.
Help a poor college student. Send a couple cents via paypal to chucks86@gmail.com
I retract my statement. I was WAY misinformed. My bad.