Slashdot Mirror
SGI Sues ATI for Patent Infringement
Ynsats writes "The Register is reporting that SGI is filing suit against ATI for patent infringement. The suit alleges that ATI violated patent number 6,650,327, "Display system having floating point rasterization and floating point framebuffering", which was filed in 1998 and granted in 2003, in its Radeon graphics cards. This is coming fast on the heels of AMD's announcement of the intention to buy ATI for $4.2B and it doesn't seem to be swaying AMD's intentions. AMD hopes to finish the takeover by the end of this year. SGI has also issued an ominous statement stating that they have plenty of intellectual property left and there will be more litigation to come."
If you can't beat them, sue them...
There's 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary and those who don't.
The SCO-iffying of sgi. I used to love SGI. I still love their old hardware, from Indys to Reality Engines, from the 4D85 I started on (before they gave fancy names) to the Onyx Infinite Reality that we ran virtual sets on in real time long before PCs could even think about doing this stuff, and the sgi's ran a lot of our live TV well into the PC era, doing a better job than PCs could years after the sgis were released.
But now it's over and sgi has become an office with a few lawyers, and this is what the call emerging from bankrupcy.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Anyone else remember they gave NVidia the same treatment back in the heady day's of '98? This is nothing new for SGI. "Rattle the cage, and try to stave off the end with another lawsuit." How did that last one work for SGI? Not so well....
The problem is that this patent fails the obviousness test about 100%. The patent itself, if you follow the link, says that "People have used floating point before, just in emulation because hardware cost too much. Now that hardware is cheap, we just do floating point rasterization from the framebuffer instead of through emulation."
I don't understand how the USPTO granted a patent that says "This method has been known for some time, but now we just have the capability to do it."
I'm all for granting legitimate patents (they do actually exist) but this one does not pass the sanity check.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
SGI is the market leader in high performance graphics.
Someone makes cool 3d video game with a VGA.
SGI laughs, continues selling workstations for $10k.
Someone releases a commodity 3d graphics card.
SGI laughs, continues selling workstations for $10k.
Someone releases a fast commodity 3d graphics card.
SGI laughs, but to placate the market, throws half-hearted PC graphics effort over the wall (Fahrenheit, x86 workstations, etc.) Effort is severely overpriced due to SGI's existing value network/cost structures. No one buys it.
SGI thinks little of it, decides to let the commodity vendors have their razor thin margins, they're doing them a favor by leaving all of the fat deals to them, right?
Commodity 3d graphics vendor offers lucrative deal to SGI top talent.
SGI top talent, looking for new and exciting and more money jump ship.
SGI, instead of getting the message, continues to focus on moving up-market and ignoring commodity markets.
Commodity graphics grows into a dozens of billions of dollar market.
SGI participates in none of it. Dies instead.
Clap. Clap. Clap.
If AMD can buy ATI for $4.2B, can't they simply add a few bucks to buy SGI too?
Why else would SGI be doing this? Eventually, either they'll sue the right deep pockets and get bought out, or another company will take a look at their growing list of pending lawsuits and decide they want in on that action. At least, that's the plan.
A once great company behaving like a patent troll is still a patent troll.
A patent is intended to be a device to protect non-obvious research and innovation from being stolen so that you can reap the rewards in your product line. In this case, the research was not stolen, as ATI thought of it too. And SGI no longer has a product line to protect.
They're suing ATI because they have no way left to make money. Period. They're not protecting their own product line or income stream, as they have neither. They're not even protecting their own research, as ATI developed this independently. They're just in their death throes, and are suing.
Remember, patent mutually assured destruction doesn't work if one company no longer has a product line to destroy. Dying companies have a habit of taking others with them.
The ______ Agenda
Good catch on that. Not many people will pay attention. I bet it took them 3 years to file the lawsuit because law moves slower than technology, and they had to take time to build a claim. I'd like to give SGI the benefit of the doubt here and say they're not a patent troll. You don't just file a lawsuit and hope for the best. As a business you need to make sure that your decision can be backed up (otherwise you become SCOX). Of course, I bet the bankruptcy had a lot to do both with the decision to file and the delay in filing. Plus, we don't know if SGI approached ATI before this and offered a deal over litigation.