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Sony Blu-ray Under Patent Infringement Probe
Lucas123 writes "The US International Trade Commission said it will launch an investigation into possible patent infringements involving Sony's Blu-ray players and other technologies using laser and light-emitting diodes, such as Motorola's Razr phone and Hitachi camcorders. The investigation was prompted by a complaint filed in February by a Columbia University professor emerita who says she invented a method of using gallium nitride-based semiconductor material for producing wide band-gap semiconductors for LEDs and laser diodes in the blue/ultraviolet end of the light spectrum. Her complaint asks the ITC to block imports of LED and laser diode technology from Asia and Europe. The total market for all types of gallium nitride devices has been forecast at $7.2 billion for 2009 alone."
After all the bogus crap and lies spread about Blu-Ray, and the fact that there locking DRM into it I'm glad. I hope either:
A) Sony looses their shirt
and
B) This allows any one to be able to manufacture the device.
pipe dream:
C) She makes 'No DRM' part of the licensing.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
PS3 and BluRay have been on the market for years now, and in quite public development for years prior to that. If this professor had come out publicly at the beginning and said, hey, that's my LED they're using, and I want boodles of ca$h, I would probably consider that acceptable behavior. Same for the RAZR (can't Motorola even spell?). But to wait this long and suddenly wake up from that Rip Van Winkle stupor to suddenly realize - that has to be my patent in there somewhere and now that you have built the market and are invested so deeply that you can't change anything to work around my idea I intend to blackmail you out of even bigger boodles of ca$h isn't acceptable. At a certain point patent trolls just harm too many other people to be allowed to continue, and this is a good case of exactly that!
Clearly Sony developed this on their own, so you can't even say they stole it.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."