SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll • Hacker News Board

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#101

Post by shkkmo » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 4:35 AM UTC

cjtrowbridge wrote: post #38

thaumasiotes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some pretty obvious followup questions: - What are alpha particles made of? - When an element undergoes alpha decay, its atomic number is reduced by two. Where do the protons go?

An alpha particle is a particle produced during alpha decay. It's always just a helium-4 which is made of two protons and two neutrons but with no electrons. This is why we have to mine for helium because it is produced in the ground by alpha decay. It's different from normal helium because it doesn't have any electrons and it has an empty orbital which means it really really would like to have some electrons and als…

I believe that is clear, those questions were intended to be read as ones to put to the nuclear engineer who claimed an alpha particle was not made of two nuetrons and two protons.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#102

Post by wpietri » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

ineedasername wrote: post #49

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…

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…

This surely is true for things where insurance company behavior doesn't increase risk. But here the incentives are different because every dollar they pay out to a patent troll is a dollar that can be used against them.

I could believe that they wouldn't be "scorched earth" about it. But I could see them being incredibly difficult to get a dime out of. Insurance companies tend to be like that normally, but here the incentives are even stronger.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#103

Post by cycomanic » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 4:38 AM UTC

I've said it before, but if you support the patent system, but say patent trolls should be abolished you are essentially saying that patents are only for big corporations to protect their turf from new incomers.

One argument is often patent trolls don't make anything themselves. So someone who makes a truly groundbreaking invention but for some reason (e.g. it requires huge capital) does not want to create a company for manufacturing it, should not be able to use patents? Also if they would actually make a company to build it and then try to go after a big player who infringes on their patent, if the big player doesn't want to pay the big player would most certainly win. They would just bring out lots of their patents that the small player supposedly infringes and thus make the suit to expensive to win. Essentially, if being an actual "builder" becomes a requirement, only big players will profit, because they have the pockets to kill off any small competitor through costs.

The other argument is patents are to bogus/general. Which is true, but what is the alternative, make the patent investigation even more elaborate and costly (it already is very expensive), so again only the big players gain.

The problems people point to with patent trolls, are problems inherent in the patent system. Patent trolls are just a convenient boogey man to blame so the big players can keep a system that disproportionately be if its them. There is virtually no benifit to the patent system overall and it should be abolished.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#104

Post by lathiat » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 4:42 AM UTC

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…

See also the Open Invention Network: https://openinventionnetwork.com/

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#105

Post by DarkmSparks » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 4:45 AM UTC

Austin Meyer of XPlane fame did a good documentary on this a few years back.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johngreath...

Basically Laminar got sued for having an application on the apple mobile store.

You Americans are crazy.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#106

Post by robomartin » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 5:02 AM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #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 clai…

> 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

That's how I have always looked at patents...until I ran into an attorney who insisted that you have to read both and that the text is just as important. The context was in reviewing patents for prior art. This confused the hell out of me because very often the text is where you see someone throw the kitchen sink at the patent. In other words, you often run into things in the text that are not really being claimed.

Not sure who's right any more. Color me confused.

Is the difference between the two cases one where, in the first case, one is using all of the patent (text and claims) as a source of prior art (the text being like a magazine article where someone discusses a bunch of ideas) vs. the second case, where one is looking for infringement of an existing patent based on what is claimed?

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#107

Post by ohazi » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 5:03 AM UTC

URSpider94 wrote: post #83

ohazi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, shrug . I don't think so. In any case, the fact that SparkFun doesn't even do semiconductor design makes this whole lawsuit even more ridiculous. They put chips onto boards, they don't design ALUs with special configurable control bits!

It actually doesn't matter if SparkFun designs chips. They do buy them, and re-sell them in devices. Patent law continues to apply to all downstream implementations of a product, until the claim is "exhausted" by a license. So, if the maker of the SoC doesn't have a license from this troll, then the troll is free to sue all of their customers, and in turn their customers, all the way down until someone pays up. It's…

Yeah I know that this is how it works, I just think it happens to be the worst possible way for it to work. If anything, pointing to the upstream manufacturer should be the end of it.

The fact that someone can sue me over some proprietary implementation of something buried inside a chip I bought where the only way to defend myself is for me to go chase down NXP or ARM is indeed absurd.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#108

Post by colanderman » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 5:04 AM UTC

nixpulvis wrote: post #79

kens wrote: post #68

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 p…

I'm no patent lawyer either, but I skimmed over the pages of "434" and it's clearly a bunch of half baked shit. Can you list one novelty in there worthy of patent, even for 1998? I'll grant you that `malloc` might be a bit of a stretch for the full extent of the patent, but surely FPGA manufacturers aren't sweating about this, right!? Anyway, space-time tradeoffs and the like, it's all basically the same shit, so why…

If you "skimmed pages" you are reading the wrong pages.

The only page that matters is the final one, the text after "I Claim". It is very narrow (as the GP points out), and for something that probably actually existed and did something arguably, if minutely, novel. It sounds like a particular implementation technique for some sort of MIMD vector processor.

The entire rest of the document is explicatory, and indicates nothing about what was actually patented, just about how the invention is actually used in a system.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#109

Post by AlbertCory » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #106

AlbertCory wrote: post #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 clai…

> 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 That's how I have always looked at patents...until I ran into an attorney who insisted that you have to read both and that the text is just as important. The context was in reviewing patents for prior art. This confused the hell out of me because very often the text is where you see someo…

Bingo. You've got it. I was talking about SparkFun trying to determine if he's infringing. When we look at a patent that way, we care mainly what the claim says.

On the other hand, every word of everything ever published can be used as prior art. So if SparkFun was trying to invalidate the patent, they would look for anything published anywhere, including patents but also journals, books, etc.

Your comment about the kitchen sink is also true -- when you're trying to get the patent through the PTO, you may want to add claims later, and you cannot change the spec. So you put everything in the spec you might want to claim later.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#110

Post by arvindamirtaa » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 5:37 AM UTC

W-Stool wrote: post #19

Did I miss in the article what the author plans to do about this? It is one thing to poke fun at patent trolls, but when you are the target of the troll legally you need to do something. What's their response going to be?

The author mentions that the product on which the suit is being brought about sold very few units and that if they really want to collect on their under-$500 in royalty, they are free to bring up an expensive-for-them suit to do the same.