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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.
So SGI has been reborn as a patent troll? Welcome to the party.
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)
When I read about stuff like this, it makes me annoyed. Not because any sense of fairness or ethics (companies don't have morals), but because of the wasted resources. Litigation is money spent without any production at the end. You pay a bunch of bloodsuckers to fight another bunch of bloodsuckers and either you take money from the other guy or the other guy takes money from you, but the only people guaranteed to get paid are the bloodsuckers.
Imagine if the money spent on spurious litigation went into actual R&D, capital investment for fabrication centers, engineer salaries, hell even advertising. Anything but litigation!
But as long as there's an avenue to make money this way, you can't really expect companies like SGI to behave any differently. You're providing a way for companies that are no long profitable (either because they have no product, e.g. SGI, or because they have an antiquate business model e.g. **AA) to leech off of the market instead of exiting it. Of course they're going to try to survive and not just go quietly into that good night. So, while I'm annoyed at this behavior, you have to realize that it's intellectual property laws that are the problem. We need fewer and simpler IP laws. Of course, trying to get lawmakers to pass fewer laws is like asking a competitive eater to "take it slow", and that's not even mentioning that the bloodsuckers aren't going to be happy to see yet another cash cow disappear anytime soon.
How long will it take for public outrage to really grow until real reform is made?
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
"Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue."
There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
SGI is late to the table to become a patent troll. If there's any lesson to be learned in the past 5 years in the tech world it's that a business plan built around litigation is no plan at all (unless you are a law firm, then you're basically printing your own money).
It's a shame too, SGI was a great company with some very good products too.
However, I would point out that it's not unexpected. One of the reasons that vendors of video cards don't provide hardware programming specs or open source drivers for their products has been for fear of litigation. It's been a prevalent rumor for years that many vendors feel that their products potentially run afoul of a bunch of patents and that's why they are so cagey with letting people understand how to program for their products and to get the best performance out of them. If SGI wins in this suit, expect a horrible blood-letting in the graphics adapter business and prices for premium technology to go up across the board.
SGI always poured the lions share of its income into research, and to the best of my knowledge they, even now, continue to do so.
SGI is the company that today has the very fastest Linux computer - the Altix shared memory multiprocessing family - available at any price, really a technological marvel because it runs a single OS kernel and has memory architecture which is truly phenomenal - it scales better than any other multiprocessing/clustering solution.
So any defense of their patents, however 'unpopular' with the video gaming set, should be welcomed because it could help a company that we really owe a lot to in many ways get back into the game. Honestly.
They would not be a 'patent troll'. Don't forget, SGI open sources a LOT of its technology. Much more than most other hardware vendors. Much more.
I used to work at NASA and our division was largely an SGI shop, and yes, they were expensive, but at the time, there was nothing else out there that was comparable in ANY way. You won't ever find me saying anything bad about SGI except maybe that it would be great if they were cheaper.
Why? Because they are the best.
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.
The problem is that this patent fails the obviousness test about 100%.
If it's so obvious, why didn't you do it first?
Implementing floating-point framebuffers is non-trivial problem, and SGIs solutions to doing so are why they deserved the patent.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I am sure that if NVIDIA and ATI were to open their drivers or specs, it would make it much easier for companies with patents to go after them.
Except SGI could actually have legit patents.
SGI should have thought of spinning off it's graphics IP a long time ago. Take a look at ARM. They make nothing but IP and money.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
You are highly confused. The incandescent light bulb was one of the few patents of Edison's that was not overturned. In fact, Edison strengthed his case by buying off previous patents for similar work, making sure that there was an unbroken chain of Intellectual Property. So when Sawyer and Man attempted to challenge Edison's patent, they had to do so on addendums they added to their own patent application. The Supreme Court found that Sawyer and Man's claims were too broad, and that their addendum was an afterthought rather than core to their invention. Thus Edison's patent was upheld as valid.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
SGI is back from the dead and is now trying to feast on living companies. If that doesn't fit the halloween season I don't know what does.
to welcome our new rasterization and floating point framebuffering overlords!
You guys are really falling out of practice here.
I think we can now see the first salvo of the Patent Wars we have all feared were coming. It seems every dying company decides that they need to 'monitize their patent portfolio.' as soon as the customers disappear. And SGI will be horrible in their death throes. Thankfully most of Xerox was bought instead of us all having to suffer through their death spasms because they had even more patents to abuse when they were dying, although by now many of the most dangerous ones are probably expired.
But this is still unfocused thrashing. Wait until they, like SCO, sucumb to the temptations of the monopolist in Redmond to focus their attack.
The patent system doesn't need reform, it needs to be scraped and rethought. I'd say cap em at 1000 per year. With a number that low only real inventions would make it through and the number in any particular industry would be small enough anyone in that industry could be expected to be aware of them.
Democrat delenda est
ATI and nVidia are chock full of ex-SGI employees. For example, a good chunk of my friends from the MIPS division are at ATI. There's also the story of how they got rid of the desktop graphics division. The story goes that the entire team was pulled into the cafe. As they walked in their badges were taken. They were then told that some would be going to nVidia and some would be going home. So there is probably a whole bunch of SGI guys at nVidia as well. I wouldn't be surprised if some SGI-patented ideas leaked in....
"Where quality is like a dead stinking rat - you just can't miss it."