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Bluetooth Lawsuit
Krish writes "The Seattle Times reports that a local Washington state group is suing cellphone makers for patent infringement on bluetooth devices. Research conducted by a University of Washington undergraduate more than a decade ago has become the subject of a lawsuit filed against some of the largest cellphone manufacturers in the world.
The suit claims that consumer electronics giant Matsushita and its Panasonic unit, as well as Samsung and Nokia, are infringing on four patents sold under the 'Bluetooth' name."
I think there should be a certain time limit set on patent infringement cases called "the dumbass period" where after that time has passed, you're a complete dumbass for just realizing the patent infringement then and your case is automatically thrown out. Unless he was stuck in a desert island for the last couple years and just got rescued, he or the group or whatever should stop this pathetic attempt at scamming some money from companies.
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the article was kind of vague. this is the patent in question. Personally, it seems kind of obvious, but that's how it goes.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The article is a bit light on details. The only mention I can find is "The patents trace back to Ed Suominen, a student who was studying radio design at the University of Washington before receiving a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering in 1995." What specific invention did the cellphone manufacturers infringe on? Why did they wait so long to file suit?
Your tax dollars hard at work!!
It is interesting to note; however, that the discussed patent was filed AFTER the blue tooth protocol was established and decided upon.
God i hate all these people who have the most simple, easy to come to conclusion implimentation patents. It just pisses me off big time that company's patent this stuff and then cry wolf when someone else comes to the same conclusion on their own. It's just someone wanting to make money and nothing more.
You've confused UW and WSU. University of Washington is where Pine was developed and the student in TFA studied. Washington State University ('wazzu') is where the drinking and sports occur.
The whole spec that is bluetooth is basically an IP disaster as it is anyway. Even proper hardware isn't immune from the dreaded "license error of death".
Push Button, Receive Bacon
If I recall, the US govt paid Qualcomm over 100 million dollars to do R&D on RF technology for military communications. Then just as the technology started to become developed in the market, they patented the shit out of everything to do with CDMA. I always thought that was sort of unfair, after all my tax money paid for that R&D, and even if it didn't - it seemed like there was incentive was already out and that it was going to be invented anyhow,
That's "not going to sit back" in the exact same sense that I'm not going to sit back and post to a slashdot non-story, trashed, and listening to cricket at 4:30 in the morning.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
Perhapshe would ask: "Can't we all just get along?"
I also would like a piece of that pie. Oh, and with some whipped cream. Thanks.
The parent is obviously drunk. Someone needs to call child services.
The suit claims that consumer electronics giant Matsushita and its Panasonic unit, as well as Samsung and Nokia, are infringing on four patents sold under the "Bluetooth" name.
The patents were sold under the Bluetooth name? That is gibberish. Either the Seattle Times Technology Reporter does not know her subject matter, or she is illiterate.
There is. Its called LACHES!
http://www.converium.com/2103.asp
A lot more info on this type of patent
Suing industry giants for standard implementation goes nowhere fast! Examples: SCO vs. IBM, Rambus vs. RAM Manufacturers.
Oh! when will they learn? Probably never, the size of those monetary damages clouds all reason.
I'd ask for 1.7 trillion dollars, just to piss off RIAA
I love the way you spelled your subject... You obviously Coug'd it...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Actually, the athletics department is self-supporting. They don't receive any money from tuition, royalties, etc.
The University policy on IP revenue is here, but after administrative expenses are deducted, it basically boils down to 1/3rd going to the inventor, 1/3rd going to the department the inventor works in, and 1/3rd goes into University-wide research funds.
The Windows Bluetooth drivers definitely do seem to be an absolute disaster, at least as far as the WIDCOMM ones are concerned. AFAIK, the problem arises because the WIDCOMM driver (which is made by someone other than the hardware manufacturer -- the HW mfrs. just toss it in as an alternative to rolling their own) use the hardware ID of the BT device as part of license enforcement. But a lot of cheap BT devices seem to have zeroed-out hardware IDs, plus the driver doesn't seem to be too good about realizing when you've moved the same BT dongle from one computer to the other, or replaced an old one with a new one, etc., and generally it causes no end of grief.
But the question that I immediately start wondering is: "why is everyone using these WIDCOMM drivers?" It seems like they suck royally. But Microsoft has a separate BT stack, I believe, and obviously Apple has one as well (since I have a dongle plugged into my G5 which works perfectly). And if I'm not mistaken, somewhere in Linux there must be a Bluetooth stack that's GPL. (Actually a quick Google seems to turn up three distinct Linux BT stacks.) So it seems pretty clear that the WIDCOMM stack is inferior. Why are people tolerating it? And why are the manufacturers paying WIDCOMM for something that's otherwise free? (Are the Linux BT stacks patent-encumbered a la LAME, and have to be built up from source or something?)
You'd think Microsoft would step in here and produce a software stack that doesn't suck, because from where I'm sitting, it looks like a major point to MacOS for "just working" again. (And possibly to Linux too, but I've never tried using Bluetooth there.) Allowing people to produce shoddy, cut-rate products makes the platform look bad, and Windows isn't so big as to be immune from the cumulative effects of a million crummy devices.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
actually, from TFA they are suing the handset makers, not the chipset manufacturers. "Matsushita, Samsung and Nokia are some of CSR's largest customers, said WRF attorney Steven Lisa. Instead of suing CSR, he said the organization decided to act against the handset makers because the chipset manufacturer may not know which chips are headed to the United States, where the patent is enforceable, but the device-maker would."
Laches is not a hard and fast rule, but it does set the time period at six years. Since the patent referenced elsewhere was granted in 2003, they actually had another 2 years to file before laches became an issue -- and that's assuming that they were manufacturing at the time the patent was issued.
It's not called scamming, but it may in fact cost them the case. Sure a patent is valid for 20 years, but waiting a long time to enforce it could lose your rights to it early under US law.
there is a "dumbass period." it's also known as the statute of limitations.
Here are Suominen's patents on Google Patents. The relevant WU patent seems to be 6,631,256: Simplified high frequency tuner and tuning method.
It's a design for an image-rejecting mixer with low intermediate frequency. It's not specific to bluetooth but the type of RF tricks used in this patent are important for building a receiver on a silicon chip while minimizing the number of external analog components.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Patent asked '98 granted '99.
Hardware designed '94 released '98.
So, even if you take it that the date to use is the grant/release date, the hardware was out before the patent was granted (and maybe a year before).
So we still have the question: how can a patent released after the hardware implementing it be infringed by that hardware?
From the link:
Patent number: 6631256
Filing date: Oct 27, 2001
Issue date: Oct 7, 2003
Oct 27, 2001 is more than a decade ago? I'd suspect this is not the patent being discussed.
We're probably talking about a few of the older ones (didn't read them, only a quick search on the authors name)
6,631,256 Simplified high frequency tuner and tuning method
6,427,068 Simplified high frequency tuner and tuning method
6,069,913 Method and apparatus for determining an identifying bit sequence in a radio frequency waveform
6,052,748 Analog reconstruction of asynchronously sampled signals from a digital signal processor
5,937,341 Simplified high frequency tuner and tuning method
5,926,513 Receiver with analog and digital channel selectivity
That's why I prefer the Ducks. Only one vowel, less chance of messing it up :-P
I was thinking about creating bluetooth devices years ago...they must have read my mind! That's it...I'm calling my lawyer!
the descendants of the king of Denmark should sue because they are using his name without permission. LOL.... I wish I was a judge sometimes, so I could clean up the docket that has all of these stupid lawsuits pending.....
WRF highlights four patents (seen here: 1, 2, 3, 4) on their technology website dating back to 1996 covering a range of rf technology advances. They all cover building inventions on "...a useful device and method for receiving and tuning RF signals, with quadrature mixing to a near baseband passband performed in continuous-time and image rejection and translation to baseband performed in discrete-time. The device may also be adapted to transmit RF signals if desired."
And if you follow Microsoft's thinking, they could go after any company that has bought any bluetooth hardware, not just the manufacturers or distributors.