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U.S. Bans Some Cellphones For Patent Reasons
runner_one writes "According to the New York Times, A federal agency has banned imports of new cellphones made with Qualcomm semiconductors because the chips violate a patent held by Broadcom. The International Trade Commission said today that the import ban would not apply to mobile phone models that were imported on or before June 7." Update: 06/08 13:05 GMT by KD : Glenn Fleishman notes that Apple's iPhone will be allowed into the country, since it doesn't use any 3G chips. He adds that Apple "might have the most advanced smartphone on the market unless President Bush or his trade representative overturn the ruling (which they have the power to do)."
Play with patent fire and you're going to get burned. Remember Qualcomm suing Nokia?, Qualcomm suing GTE Wireless, Qualcomm suing Maxim, Qualcomm suing Motorolla, Qualcomm suing Ericsson, Qualcomm suing Broadcom?
Everytime a large corporation loses a big case like this, I feel we're a step closer to sane patent reform. Hopefully someone will win a patent against Broadcomm next.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
I am wondering how this might effect travelers arriving in the US with such a phone. I would imagine only a vanishingly small minority would have any idea what semiconductors powered their phone. It would certainly be a shock to arrive and have your phone confiscated.
Maybe I'm just on the left side of the bell curve, but what technology exactly is effected by this ruling? What phones use these chips? I haven't seen very many qualcomm phones so I assume others are using their chips...
Get a web developer
Every time they issue a patent that's later invalidated, they should pay compensation for issuing the patent.
The problem here, has and always will be the over willingness of the patent office to issue patents when the invention preexists but is not documented publicly, or where it's a minor increment of an existing variation. It's in the law that they have to test for obviousness and prior art, but they so narrowly define those terms as to remove the tests.
The free market will fix it, make them pay for their mistakes just like every other professional body.
It says that it found a violation on U.S. Patent No. 6,714,983. Here's the link to the patent.
One thing to note is that the ITC investigates and makes recommendations to congress and the president. It's not actually a court of law or policy making body. So I think this from the article: isn't really true. Especially when later in the article it states that the government has 60 days to approve or overturn the order made by the ITC.
Did Qualcomm employees actually read Broadcom's patent and use the helpful diagrams to build the phone chips? I rather suspect not - this is another example of independent discovery. I understand that the patent law doesn't allow that as a defense, as it's hard to prove that someone didn't read the publicly available patent. But the fact that it happens over and over again just shows that the current system blocks progress of art and science rather than encouraging it. We have to start only allowing patents that are judged non-obvious by leading experts in the area.
I just read the abstract (I know, bad form on slashdot...). Admittedly it's only the abstract, but it sounds remarkably like an abstraction layer.
What is it with Broadcom? This sounds like the same kinda rubbish that is stopping my wireless from working natively in Linux.
Whats the harm in yelling 'Computer, end program!'? You could be living in Star Trek! Go on.. give it a try.
After skimming the patent I'm failing to see the IP. Claim 1 basically describes a linking of attempt rate to success rate... and isn't that like the exponential backoff of ethernet? The fact that they then tie this to turning on and off a periphial (the power hungry transmitter) is the kind of optimization that laptop driver authors have been doing of years... so while prior art in the field of mobile phones may be thin on the ground there are examples all over the place.
:)
The primary and secondary examiner are listed... has anyone found an online resource that provides ranks or rates these guys? Some googling turns up proposals for community participation in the patent review process but nothing like a 'hot or not' site for examiners
a recent ruling in the uk stated that compensation should be paid on a patent that's been granted even if that patent is subsequently found to be invalid.
Now that sucks
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
D'you mean Daryl Lovelace?
Cos' violating him won't get you arrested, you'd just be in for a right rap in the face.
"A pritable data terminal includes at least two communication transeivers having different operating charactrtistics, one for conducting data communications on a wired sub-network and one for conducting data communications on a wireless subnetwork"
So basically they patented all wired and wireless networks. Isn't just a case of a US company using legislation to impede competitors entry into the market. The whole TRIPS thing being designed so any future non-US telecom company will have to pay a tithe to Washington just to sell their own technology. Pax Americana rules everywhere.
was Re:ITC press release
davecb5620@gmail.com
Qualcomm has been aggressive in promoting their patent rights. But to say
that they are unique in this field is completely ignoring one side of the story.
Every try to make something in the GSM/UMTS space? You will have about a dozen companies
approach you with their hands out. Nokia, Qualcomm, Ericcson, Motorola, Lucent, Samsung
and several others. CDMA royalties are about 5%, almost all paid to Qualcomm. GSM/UMTS
royalties sum up to about 18%. The only difference is that if you are one of the big guys,
you "cross-license" your patents so that you don't end up actually paying anything. If you
are a new entrant... well, you are out of luck.
What is pissing off the Nokias, Ericcsons and Broadcomms of the world is that in the CDMA space,
they have no patents at all. None. That is because they fought CDMA every step of the way until Qualcomm
demonstrated conclusively that it is a commercially practical technology. Then they
turned around and tried to claim it as their own, and tried to co-opt it by applying it with minor
modifications to the UMTS space.
Actually, I am amazed that Broadcomm is getting away with this. Their sum total of contributions to
the wireless space is close to zero. They have done some work in the wireline world in the early
years, but they have contributed zip, zilch, nada in the development of wireless IP. They are not
even a name in the industry. HOwever, it is possible that they have purchased some IPR of late.
I am quite happy to see cracks in the patent edifice as a whole, but making Qualcomm the villain in
this is not correct. Qualcomm laid many of the foundations for modern wireless communications technology;
Qualcomm corporate R&D is about as close as you can get to how Bell Labs used to be.
Lots of Qualcomm's IPR consists of non-trivial, non-obvious, fundamental contributions to communications
theory. Most other wireless companies, in particular Nokia, Motorola, Ericcson etc have done nothing
fundamental in the past 15 years. They are product companies whose forte consists of taking old technologies
and packaging them in crowd-pleasing form factors, or (in the case of Ericcson), maintaining relationships
with behemoth carriers.
Magnus
there is a whole new up and coming world out there (ironically fueled by US economic suicide.)
I didn't expect it to happen in my lifetime, but carry on. There's a reason why emerging market funds are leading the way nowadays.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Asia is large and growing rapidly, but a huge portion of that growth is driven by sales to the US market - remember that the US economy is more than five times the size of the Chinese economy, and nearly twice the size of the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean economies combined. Loss of access to the US market would be a huge lose/lose for both Asian economies AND the US.
US market: 300 million people
Asian market: 2,000 million people
Trade barrier and publicly shredding any letter you get from an economist(lest they do another 1000 letter bit again): Priceless
A few calculated "accidents" causing the fall of countries formerly siphoning off jobs from your country: Beyond priceless.
There's the Austrian model, and there's defending your country from all threats foreign and domestic.
I postulate the US of the future will be a technological backwater in the coming years with it's trade policies and legal foolishness.
If it is to hard to sell in the US, so what... there is a whole new up and coming world out there (ironically fueled by US economic suicide.)
Not if there are a few well-calculated Oops's over in Asia. The sun wont set on the US just yet, we just have to stop helping their students and start helping our (and only our) own on a 100% non-competitive basis towards a full education. If they want to invade MIT, they'll have to accept reciprocated degrees attained in their home
country. Save the competition for the Olympics, admissions and education are not the place.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Asia is large and growing rapidly
That's a problem easily taken care of by a few finely crafted US/EU assets.
Should Asia fall, there's always a possibility of just scrapping the WTO, all other current trade treaties, and making the EU into a North Atlantic group large enough to make Asia fall back.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The US once led the world in industrial output.
Then we decided that we would move industry overseas, and our primary output would be capital manipulation.
Now, we've decided that we'll neither make things or manipulate capital, but instead sue people who actually make things, move capital, invent things, or make entertainment. Parasites on the world.
The next step for the top 5 percenters is to just sit in a chair and demand people give them stuff because they deserve it for being them. What do we need them for? Disband their corporations for national security reasons. No further reason is necessary once you invoke that, and really, it's true. These pigs are a threat to national and world security. They are choking human progress. They are the highwaymen with nice two thousand dollar suits. We don't need them.
I'm more worried about the institution of a "you-can't-leave" list, which was floating around, very quietly, on the margins of the US government last fall. If we wait too long, anyone who pisses off the "Mayberry Machiavellis" may be barred from leaving the US. Before you laugh, remember the kidnapped foreign nationals, the torture camps, the looting of our treasury, the new construction of detention camps on US soil by Halliburton right this moment. There is no limit once you declare human rights to be a quaint relic of a past, once you declare that the world in in a Forever War against a cloudy and indistinct omnipresent evil (linked to Satan if you listen to Bush's religious base).
The real question at this point I don't see being asked is, how likley is this to be overturned? Since it has such a broad impact, I would think that the thought might be to overturn this - yet at the same time, you can't just trample on patent owners rights from above every time they become inconvenient, if you were being an idealist you would let the ruling stand and them demand expidited review of the patents in question to be sure they were valid, or overturn them. If they are held to be valid under closer revue then in fact it would seem fair they should stand.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just got one on Tuesday. There's a nice "QUALCOMM 3G CDMA" right on the back of the phone.
Logic Pro 7.x has a USB hardware dongle.