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Firm Seeks To Ban Mobile Companies' Imports To US

Posted by Soulskill on from the even-silly-patent-claims-are-bigger-in-texas dept.

snydeq writes "Texas-based Saxon Innovations has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission to bar six companies — including Research in Motion, Palm, and Nokia — from importing handheld devices into the US. At issue are three patents that Saxon purchased in July 2007; a patent for keypad monitor with keypad activity-based activation; a patent for an apparatus and method for disabling interrupt marks in processors or the like; and a patent for a device and method for interprocessor communication by using mailboxes owned by processor devices. Saxon, with five employees, purchased about 180 US patents formerly owned by Advanced Micro Devices or Legerity in 2007, according to its ITC complaint."

27 of 137 comments (clear)

  1. You know what they say... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you can't innovate, litigate!

    1. Re:You know what they say... by jd · · Score: 4, Funny

      And if you can't litigate, fumigate!

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    2. Re:You know what they say... by thegrassyknowl · · Score: 4, Funny

      If you can't fumigate, masturbate... and it seems that's exactly what they're doing. Bloody wankers.

      --
      I drink to make other people interesting!
    3. Re:You know what they say... by KDR_11k · · Score: 5, Funny

      Bloody? That's gotta be pretty furious then.

      --
      Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
  2. Very nice! by The+Bungi · · Score: 4, Interesting

    As if the frakin' telecommunications industry in this country wasn't crap enough compared to Europe and Asia.

    Way to go.

  3. Litigation is expensive by Dachannien · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...but filing ITC complaints is cheap.

    The whole point here is that enforcing these patents against all of those companies is an expensive proposition with no guarantee of returns. However, they can get Free Money by extorting those companies to pay them royalties, backed up by the threat of an import ban from the ITC, and even if their complaint is rejected, they've spent practically nothing.

    1. Re:Litigation is expensive by StuartHankins · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's way past time for patent reform, these patent trolls are way out of hand.

      Can we require businesses that patent the ideas to have real, actual products to retain the patent?

      They buy an idea, then sit on it. No one benefits from it (except lining their pockets with no efforts on their part). Bad for consumers, bad for other businesses. Boo!

    2. Re:Litigation is expensive by Zordak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Can we require businesses that patent the ideas to have real, actual products to retain the patent?

      Well, since one of the things the complainant has to prove in the ITC is that they have a domestic industry practicing the asserted claims, yes, we can.

      --

      Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
    3. Re:Litigation is expensive by Sparr0 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sorry, you haven't been keeping up. The popular M.O. is to sit on the idea until it has already become popular, THEN offer licenses. If you come out with the patent to begin with, potential licensees will just work around it. Waiting until they have built their business on it is far more profitable in the long run.

    4. Re:Litigation is expensive by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'll bet that this is the real reason that the iPhone doesn't have a keyboard.

      When was the last time Apple based a product on what their lawyers told them? Seriously. Apple has a long and flagrant history of violating 'intellectual property' laws starting with name of the company itself. Anybody remember the 'sosueme' audio file?

      --
      My blog
    5. Re:Litigation is expensive by artor3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Can we require businesses that patent the ideas to have real, actual products to retain the patent?

      No, because some times sitting on an idea to get another company to pay for it is a legitimate practice.

      Let's say I create Startup Inc, and design a new type of lithography. I don't have the money to build a fab or anything, so I show the tech to Intel and offer to let them use it in exchange for royalties. Under your system they could say no, use it anyway, and I wouldn't be able to sue, because I don't have an actual product.

      Patent trolls suck, and there should be a way to stop them through litigation, but we have to be sure that we don't kill off real innovators in the process.

    6. Re:Litigation is expensive by Stormwatch · · Score: 4, Informative

      Anybody remember the 'sosueme' audio file?

      You must mean Sosumi.

      --
      Circumcision is child abuse.
    7. Re:Litigation is expensive by turbidostato · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Let's say I create Startup Inc, and design a new type of lithography. I don't have the money to build a fab or anything, so I show the tech to Intel and offer to let them use it in exchange for royalties."

      In order for you to convince Intel you show them a prototype. *Then* you have a working example covering your patent. If you don't have even a prototype then all you have is an idea and ideas shouldn't be subjected to patents.

      "Patent trolls suck, and there should be a way to stop them through litigation, but we have to be sure that we don't kill off real innovators in the process."

      Two words: Trade Secrets.

    8. Re:Litigation is expensive by jonbryce · · Score: 3, Informative

      The iPhone doesn't have a keyboard because Steve Jobs hates buttons.

    9. Re:Litigation is expensive by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      To be fair, Apple Computer wasn't violating IP law when adding sound capabilities to their operating system, they were violating contract law when they violated the details of their settlement with Apple Records. At least, arguably. And given that computers making music was utterly inevitable and that the argument that there would be confusion between Apple Computer and Apple Records was Just. Fucking. Stupid., it's hard to argue that they really did anything wrong there. My (admittedly limited) understanding of trademark law is that you can't create a trademark which is substantially similar if it will cause confusion. My also-limited understanding of this case is that Apple Records abused the system in the hopes of making some free money.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  4. patents by p51d007 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is exactly what is wrong with the patent process. You have a "company" of only FIVE people, who could potentially stop any technology that might "infringe" on these obscure patents.

  5. IP - Imaginary Property by timmarhy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    my god the US patent office needs to start applying this thing called the obviousness test.

    --
    If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
  6. This is bad for the US... in the long run. by KokorHekkus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If the US patent system diverges far enough from the global average rights of patents then the US market will become too expensive to both develop for and enter into. Of course the US market is a major one but if the worldwide market share is bigger it means that the risks in the US (submarine patents etc) are not worth spending your money on primarily. So it will protect the US companies on their home turf. But multinational companpanies, even US based, will be looking at the US as a secondary market because of the risks.

    1. Re:This is bad for the US... in the long run. by bigsteve@dstc · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Another possible outcome is that companies cave in to the trolls and enter into licensing arrangements for products sold in the US. Multiply by a factor of 100 or so for each of the patents for so-called "inventions" that might be infringed by any given product.

      The costs will then be passed on to the US consumer. The end result is a private taxation system where every consumer and every business effectively pays a "high tech" tax on every high tech device purchased and every service used. And the money just disappears into the pockets of the patent speculators ... with no net return to businesses, consumers, or even to the people who created the inventions in the first place.

  7. I guess it's clear why AMD sold them... by russotto · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...because they're crap. I looked at the first patent and the first few claims looked suspiciously like the (certainly not novel) idea of connecting up a keyboard matrix in such a way that pressing a key triggers an interrupt on the row lines, which triggers a wake-up event and a keyboard scan. I couldn't tell about the later claims. Then I looked at the interrupt mask patent

    1. An interrupt mask disable circuit comprising:

    first logic circuitry operably coupled to receive an interrupt request and a mask signal and to provide an interrupt signal when the interrupt request is active and the mask signal is disabled, and to provide a non-interrupt signal when the mask signal is enabled regardless of whether the interrupt request is active or inactive; and
    second logic circuitry operably coupled to receive a mask activation signal and a mask override signal and to produce the mask signal, wherein the mask signal is enabled when the mask activation signal is active and the mask override signal is not enabled and wherein the mask signal is disabled when the mask override signal is active regardless of whether the mask activation signal is enabled or disabled.

    You've got to be kidding me. AMD patented a common interrupt mask circuit... in 1994? Apparently it isn't only with respect to software that the patent office is out of touch.

  8. Patents and the monkeys typing Shakespear... by SuperCharlie · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So Im reading yet another article on how some troll is ransoming out some more patents.. great.. meanwhile, a day or two ago I read the who's got the most patents for 2008 and numbers like.. IBM said it earned 4,186 U.S. patents in 2008, Microsoft Corp earned 2,030 patents, while Intel Corp had 1,776 and Hewlett-Packard 1,424. (from a Slashdot article)

    Im thinkin the real weight of the patent system isnt even touched by major corps. Individual and small group/investment firm patent companys like Eolas looking for that ONE patent to go home on, by sheer numbers, probably dwarf the IBM and MS's of the world.. regardless..

    By sheer brute force attack on common technology methods, conduits, hardware and the like they create a "monkeys typing Shakespear" effect, not with letters, but with common terms and principles.

    At the rate the monkeys are being added, soon no one should be able to do anything without everyones approval.



    Tada...

    1. Re:Patents and the monkeys typing Shakespear... by turbidostato · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Im thinkin the real weight of the patent system isnt even touched by major corps. Individual and small group/investment firm patent companys like Eolas looking for that ONE patent to go home on, by sheer numbers, probably dwarf the IBM and MS's of the world.. regardless.."

      I really don't know, but it doesn't matter. The core of the bussines here is not having "that ONE patent" but having that one patent WITHOUT an industry backing it up. Big corps have used patents as deterrent weapons against their rivals for decades now but the problem here is not a little tech company with the "ONE patent": as long as they produce something, they are probably in violation of dozens of patents belonging to the very ones they want to license to, so they will be forced into a mutual agreement; if the case is between two big corps they have such a big patent arsenal that they again are forced to cooperate or face an assured mutual destruction scenario. But lawyer-based firms don't produce anything so they are immune to the usual patent counterattack which has made the patent system flaws more obvious.

  9. Domestic Industry? by UnrealisticWhample · · Score: 3, Informative

    They don't even have an actual website. If you go to , all you'll find is an under construction message. Pretty much all you can find about them online is related to suing people. I miss the good ole days of the 1790's when Thomas Jefferson would deny a patent if the inventor couldn't demonstrate a working product.

  10. Re:You are kidding. right? by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 3, Insightful

    EU could not handle a 9/11 in their system.

    Neither could the USA it seems.

  11. One Guess Why Saxon is based in Tyler, TX by Hangtime · · Score: 3, Informative

    U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ding ding ding

    I'm from Texas and I think every judge in that district should be removed.

  12. Quickest solution by yabba-dabba-do · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Is for RIM to disable Obama's phone. "Sorry, when the patent mess is cleaned up, we'll turn it back on."

  13. Re:prior art by OolimPhon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I can do much better than that. Honeywell Level 66 mainframes had mailboxes in their CPUs to talk to the I/O processors. This dates back to at least 1975, when I first encountered them. Probably true for Multics mainframes from the '60s too.