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SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

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Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#61

Post by ineedasername »

staticautomatic wrote: post #20
alisonkisk wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. This is called a patent pool. It's very common. 2. You can't sue a parent troll for patent infringement, since they don't have any technology business. They are only "companies" on paper.

You can preemptively sue them, albeit not for infringing on your IP. It’s called declaratory relief.

Unfortunately it would basically be an ongoing DDoS on the court system to try to get declaratory relief for existing garbage patents and the never ending stream if them created every day.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#62

Post by staticautomatic »

ineedasername wrote: post #61
staticautomatic wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can preemptively sue them, albeit not for infringing on your IP. It’s called declaratory relief.

Unfortunately it would basically be an ongoing DDoS on the court system to try to get declaratory relief for existing garbage patents and the never ending stream if them created every day.

Maybe. I’m not sure anyone has tried it. It wouldn’t work against a party like Intellectual Ventures but in theory you might be able to take out a nascent troll with a smaller war chest, and if you win they might have a tough time selling off their portfolio.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#63

Post by nickysielicki »

ohazi wrote: post #50
cecilpl2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What chance does our legal system have of gauging the validity of these patents when we can't even get a forum of technical people, with no horse in the race, to agree on what these things mean?

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#64

Post by 6510 »

gonehome wrote: 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…

You could gather a bunch of anons on some hard to track website then mail bricks and letters to them.

Every envelope has to be opened. The content can be the usual wordy mess and be made to look a lot like the official kind of mail they receive so that it all has to be kept and sorted to make sure nothing important is skipped.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#65

Post by compiler-guy »

akudha wrote: post #55
BeetleB wrote: post #40

BTW, for anyone who hasn't heard it, the This American Life episode linked to is absolutely worth listening to (or just read the transcript). They should link to the update to that story: Transcript: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/transcript Audio: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/when-patents-attack-par... One key takeaway: If you yield to a patent troll and agree to give them some percentage of your earni…

If you yield to a patent troll and agree to give them some percentage of your earnings, and later that patent gets invalidated - you still have to keep paying. This broke my brain. How does this make any sense whatsoever??!!

It’s a term you agree to when you sign the settlement to get them to go away the first time. And one of the reasons that you shouldn’t give in the first time either.

It makes sense to sign it because they have you over a barrel.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#66

Post by ineedasername »

mschuster91 wrote: post #60
ineedasername wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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. Insurance companies generally hold vast amounts of assets - and some already shift their investment strategy based on policy, e.g. climate change and other sustainability goals (see https://www.mckinsey.com/industr…

Risk reduction is a little different than attempting to solve the root cause. It's also notable that risk reduction generally doesn't include launching massive litigation initiatives. An important distinction is that insurance companies try to reduce risk so that they reduce claims, not solve the root problem. In fact solving the problem could put them out of business. Any effort towards risk reduction is to maximize profit, not solve the problem.

I also don't see any market that insurance companies could exit to reduced patent trolling.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#67

Post by marcosdumay »

lamontcg wrote: post #37
sharemywin wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when I toured a research nuclear reactor and I was talking with the nuclear phd student and I said something about an alpha particle and the protons and neutrons. And they were trying to say alpha particles aren't made up of protons and neutrons. Made me realize than that even an expert in the field might not know something that I would have thought was common knowledge.

They may have been so into their own bellybutton lint that they were very concerned about the difference between bound quarks on a QCD lattice compared to just elmer's gluing 2 free neutrons and 2 free protons together or something like that.

Yes, I have heard a lot of times how atom nuclei and alpha particles aren't made of protons and neutrons. It's always on this sense.

Some times the difference is relevant (and people dealing with radioactivity see those times more often than others), but some people insist on the pedantic distinction even when it isn't.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#68

Post by kens »

I like SparkFun and I don't like patent trolls, but I have to say that SparkFun's mockery of the patent doesn't make sense. It is pretty clear that this patent was written by an engineer describing their actual system in great detail followed by one fairly narrow claim. I've seen many patents that are mostly written by lawyers, and I don't see any influence of lawyers in this patent.

SparkFun's criticism is kind of painful to read. The diagram that SparkFun claims is SPI is not SPI. The discussion that SparkFun claims is malloc is entirely unrelated to malloc. SparkFun claims that when the patent discusses processing multiple streams of data that it's discussing variable length arrays, but it's not. They claim that a MAU doesn't exist, but a MAU is a multiplier-accumulator unit. SparkFun seems to be entirely confusing the motivation of the engineer filing the patent in 2008 with the motivation of the patent trolls. I've seen many patents that are fluff and nonsense, but this one is a solid patent.

The infringement claim is probably bogus; I don't see any evidence that the pcDuino infringes the one narrow claim in the patent. I hope that SparkFun can quickly get rid of this lawsuit. I don't get any enjoyment out of criticizing SparkFun's post, but having spent the time to look over the patent, I feel that I should comment.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#69

Post by mbreese »

caf wrote: post #39
rrss wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that line as poking fun of the fact that RAM is not capitalized because the lawyers that wrote this think "ram" is a word, not an acronym

That's exactly what I understood it to mean when I read it.

I read it the other way, but now that you mention it, this interpretation makes much more sense.
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