Transmeta Sues Intel for Patent Infringement

Cr0w T. Trollbot writes "Today Transmeta filed suit against Intel for patent infringement. From the article: 'The suit [...] alleges that Intel infringed upon ten of Transmeta's patents. The patents cover computer architecture and power efficiency technologies.' Transmeta offered a low-power x86 processor until last year which used Transmeta's vaunted 'code morphing' software."

Comments

Go figure

[nurb432]

When the chips are down, ( no pun intended ) and your business model is going up in a fireball.. sue someone!

Re:now just another sleezy IP company eh

[TheSpoom]

This is why business logic patents either shouldn't last nearly as long, especially technological patents, or (preferably) shouldn't exist at all. I don't remember Transmeta doing anything to advance the useful arts and sciences using these technologies, yet Intel has done so and made quite a bit of money in the meantime.

Competition drives technology forward.
Patents effectively outlaw competition.
Therefore, patents kill the need for the company holding the patent to advance their own technology any further.

The only reason these sorts of patents still exist are because some very powerful corporations can effectively stunt the market using them; by default nobody can compete on the same playing field since to do so they would have to have licenses to use the technologies in question, and companies like Intel and IBM own literally thousands of patents on just about everything. So they license their patent libraries among themselves, forming a sort of corporate clique in which outsiders are persona non grata.

Maybe once enough of these patents bite companies like Intel in the ass, things will change. Unfortunately I think it'll take a while for that to happen.