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SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

sparkfun.com

41–50 of 186 posts

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#41
OK - so I vaguely skipped through the patent looking for claims - mostly it's a description of some guys possibly novel media processor architecture, remember the description is not the patent, the claims are. I could only find a short claims section at the end (1.5 pages out of 56).

This doesn't read like most patents which tend to be lower on the details, and longer on the claims, I suspect that this was either written directly by the engineer, or written to effectively publish the details of the design to avoid others patenting their stuff out from under them (or both). Probably the original company went under and the patent was onsold to the troll.

The actual claims have nothing to do with SRAM vs. DRAM (or even malloc) - my (lay) reading of these claims are that you have to have:

- memory containing instructions and data - more than one processor containing a multiplier, an ALU, a logic unit, a bit processing unit - all the media processors running in parallel

this does describe pretty much any modern multicore chip, or graphics chip, and perhaps more closely Sony's Cells for example.

As a sometimes computer architect having a bunch of CPUs execute code and data out of shared memory is 'obvious' (and was at the time, I was building media processors before 1997, and frankly was 30 years before). As far as prior art - I'd consider any multi-cpu mainframe starting in the 1960's onwards to be valid prior art here

If I were Sparkfun I'd pull in Arm, Intel, AMD, nVidia, Sony, IBM .... and nuke this thing from orbit

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#42

I was under the impression that modern patents had to have a clear list of claims but this one has nothing but technobabble and "1 Claim, 64 Drawing Sheets". How was this approved?

It was approved in 2001. They weren't as tight on this kind of nonsense back then.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#43

I was under the impression that modern patents had to have a clear list of claims but this one has nothing but technobabble and "1 Claim, 64 Drawing Sheets". How was this approved?

As I've mentioned elsewhere here I suspect that most of this patent was originally written at least in part to establish prior-art and as a result to avoid future patent claims - it's some guy describing his quite valid new architecture - don't tear him down for that.

What is an issue is: 1) the actual claim (last 2 pages) which tries to essentially claim any multi-cpu shared memory computer from the 1960s onwards, and 2) the patent troll trying to claim this is valid

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#45
Me: software engr, retired; also patent agent who worked in Google Patent Litigation.

A rookie mistake is reading the TEXT of a patent. A pro looks only at the claims. The text is only there to "support" the claims, which boils down to using the same words. Cynical, I know.

Claims unfortunately look like gibberish if you're unschooled, but "construing" them is an early step in a trial, and often if you get a bad claim construction you give up. I worked on tons of claim construction briefs.

I'll read those claims a little later this evening.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#46
post #6

> > The cost is further reduced by employing only static or dynamic ram as a means for holding the state of the system. [...] > Dynamic ram? Can I poke fun at them for not knowing what RAM is? Yes I can. > The above paragraph succinctly describes malloc(), which is perhaps one of the most fundamental advancements in modern computing. The problem is that Al didn’t invent it. Memory management (the ability to take RAM…

You are mistaken. The lawsuit itself is clearly referring to dynamic memory allocation. It refers to "static or dynamic ram" to mean RAM in general, but the paragraph has nothing to do with the characteristics of SRAM vs DRAM.

From page 6 of the lawsuit [0]:

> in fixed function implementations all possible functional requirements of the necessary data processing must be implemented on the silicon regardless of the final application of the device or the nature of the data to be processed.

> Therefore, if a fixed function device must adaptively process data, then it must commit silicon resources to process all possible flavors of the data.

> The inventors therefore sought to provide a new apparatus for implementing systems on a chip that will enable the user to achieve performance of fixed-function implementation at a lower cost.

> The lower cost is achieved by removing redundancy from the system. The redundancy is removed by re-using groups of computational and storage elements in different configurations.

> The cost is further reduced by employing only static or dynamic ram as a means for holding the state of the system.

> All of this reconfiguration can take place dynamically in run-time without any degradation of performance over fixed-function implementations.

> The present invention is therefore an apparatus for adaptively dynamically reconfiguring groups of computations and storage elements in run-time to process multiple separate streams of data and control at varying rates.

As you can see, it's saying that rather than pinning RAM (as previous fixed-function approaches did in the 80s), this system allows you to request memory dynamically.

I mean, it's a garbage patent anyway and not really worth so much time trying to analyze what they are claiming, but Nathan isn't wrong - the patent really isn't referring to SRAM and DRAM.

[0] https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/home_page_posts/3/9/1/7/Alta...

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#47

I was under the impression that modern patents had to have a clear list of claims but this one has nothing but technobabble and "1 Claim, 64 Drawing Sheets". How was this approved?

What is the penalty for the USPTO if they grant patents that shouldn't have been granted? The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing at all. If someone wants to force a review, the USPTO actually charges to give a patent a second, more thorough look, effectively double dipping. It is a profoundly broken system, and people do just push tonnes and tonnes of nonsense patents. This includes the major companies (Apple,…

I could see why seeing as they don't want to screw around with patent trolls either.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#48
post #4

Interesting read. Much more in-depth bullshittery than the usual patent troll. I love sparkfun, I've spent far too much money there building small trinkets, but I like supporting a local independent shop, and getting quality builds, rather than waiting and risking lower quality direct from Shenzen. I'm almost glad they got hit by the troll, because they're one of the companies with the wherewithal and life to blow th…

Once the law firm realizes that their potential score here is at best in the low hundreds of dollars, they will undoubtedly never follow up. It's like any spam, the few victims they land on will pay for dozens of pointless filings.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#49
post #5

I wonder if it's possible to make some sort of patent troll insurance company. Basically a company that attempts to collect as many patents as possible to weaponize against trolls and then provides legal protection to clients from trolls. The clients can share their patents with the insurance company too to help them become more powerful. Then when sued by a troll the insurance company goes scorched earth to destroy…

Unfortunately the economics of insurance & low settlement demands from patent trolls would simply come into sync at some point.

This is because patent trolling is a low effort attack, while fighting them is a high effort activity. With an insurance company it would be no different: The pool of money from premiums still wouldn't be enough to fight all of the trolls because they would also all be pooled.

It's cheaper to just collect premiums, payout claims as little as possible, and if claims get too high you re-assess your actuarial tables and raise premiums where appropriate.

Insurance companies simply aren't in the business of solving the root-cause of any given problem. They're in the business of risk analysis & pooled risk & selling financial risk mitigation on that basis.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#50
post #6

> > The cost is further reduced by employing only static or dynamic ram as a means for holding the state of the system. [...] > Dynamic ram? Can I poke fun at them for not knowing what RAM is? Yes I can. > The above paragraph succinctly describes malloc(), which is perhaps one of the most fundamental advancements in modern computing. The problem is that Al didn’t invent it. Memory management (the ability to take RAM…

You are mistaken. The lawsuit itself is clearly referring to dynamic memory allocation. It refers to "static or dynamic ram" to mean RAM in general, but the paragraph has nothing to do with the characteristics of SRAM vs DRAM. From page 6 of the lawsuit [0]: > in fixed function implementations all possible functional requirements of the necessary data processing must be implemented on the silicon regardless of the fi…

The lawsuit is decidedly not referring to dynamic memory allocation. There's no way to "request" a runtime-specified amount of memory dynamically here.

The memory in question is a tiny, fixed-size block of RAM inside the chip that's directly connected to the various logic blocks. There is no way to allocate or request anything -- that memory is all you've got, and all of the bits have been spoken for by the time the chip is taped out.

What they seem to be describing is something resembling a C union mapped directly onto that RAM block. That's not dynamic allocation, that's "these bits are interpreted differently depending on which logic blocks are active, so that we don't have to have a separate RAM block for each functional unit, because that would be a waste of space."

Every legal combination and order of configuration structures in this RAM block is specified and tested, that's why it's not dynamic allocation. If anything, it's a really big list of possible static allocations.

I agree with you that the SRAM/DRAM distinction is immaterial, but that's just how patents are written.

But of course, all this is a complete tangent. Nothing that SparkFun makes has anything to do with any of this.

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