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SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

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Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#131

Post by nkssy »

It might help if the patent dispute involved or required actual instantiations of the content of the patent.

It should be a valid argument that if no device exists for a category of patents then the patent is unenforceable. There must be a prototype. Set a threshold. After filing, there has to be some kind of prototype to demonstrate as an example. Otherwise what was the point of the patent anyway? Especially if its only good for 20 years. It should manifest within 5 years in the least otherwise where was the benefit to society of granting an effective monopoly?

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#132

Post by smaudet »

URSpider94 wrote: post #82
simondotau wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a reasonable world, benefit of the doubt shouldn't be given to the patent holder when there is genuine confusion. It should be incumbent upon the filer to describe their invention in a way that is clear to experts in that relevant field. Sadly I suspect the world we live in isn't so reasonable.

The patent holder didn't receive their patent by accident. It was reviewed by an examiner in the patent office. Patent examiners are skilled technical researchers who are trained to comprehend the matter they are examining. Once a patent has been granted, indeed, there is benefit of the doubt that the patent is valid. However - when it comes to whether the patent applies to a given invention, that's a matter of debat…

This is also completely ignoring economics of quality for government - the folks working there typically are either bottom rung (willing to accept non-competetive lower pay), or as a 'civic duty' of some sort. There is some exception perhaps for the intelligence community (NSA et all) because they have had somewhat a monopoly in that legally speaking, although again, there are private entities out there you never hear of which may be of higher quality.

But even there, talk to pretty much any vet - you can quickly surmise that as far as classifications go, most stuff is over classified without valid reason, because the safest thing to do for the low level peon is slap a "top secret" on anything and everything...

And there's plenty of evidence otherwise as others have mentioned - most patents are garbage and should never have been given out.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#133

Post by Taniwha »

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…

I've said this elsewhere here but I think that 1) it's likely been written by an engineer, not a patent lawyer, and 2) it's possible that one reason for the large initial exposition is not to claim new invention but to establish prior art - to protect the engineer against patent trolls

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#134

Post by smaudet »

tsimionescu wrote: post #123
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…

No, you are obviously wrong here. Even the wording of the lawsuit is extremely clear: "The cost is further reduced by employing only static or dynamic ram as a means for holding the state of the system." - that is, they only use S/D RAM for holding the state of the system, no other kind of memory. I have no idea how you can misread this to think it refers to requesting memory dynamically - they explicitly say "static…

You are cherry picking:

"The ‘434 patent refers to the aggregate of the dynamically reconfigurable computational and storage elements as a “media processing unit.”

They are broadly talking about loading things in RAM. If there is a more specific purpose, its not mentioned here.

I.e. there is no special purpose chip here which happens to be embedded in some other special purpose device, it honestly sounds like some engineer wrote a driver that could live in RAM and they tried to patent that.

It then specifically goes on talk about it being a thing at runtime, not some pre-soldered state, i.e. software, so yes, malloc.

Utterly ridiculous.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#135

Post by AshamedCaptain »

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…

Having significant Gell-Mann amnesia here after reading the article... and some of the comments here.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#136

Post by ncphil »

The terms for both patent and copyright are way too long. Instead of increasing over the years as we advanced further into the Digital Age, they should have been gradually decreasing. The whole point of the US patent and copyright system is not to "give a special reward" to inventors and authors, but to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts" by building up the public domain commons of inventions and art. The current law, with its lenghthy terms and slipshod processes that invite abuse by trolls and encourage the smothering oppression by monopoly power, is at odds with those original goals. It needs to be torn down completely and rebuilt for this not-so-new century.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#137

Post by alias_neo »

roelschroeven wrote: post #129
colanderman wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The claim as I understand it (for reference: based on the description on the last page of https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/home_page_posts/3/9/1/7/Pate... , after "I Claim"): "A data processing device with these components: - RAM for storing data and instructions - Multiple processors, each connected to the RAM, each with a multiplier, an arithmetic unit, an arithmetic logic unit, and a bit manipulation unit, all of t…

If I didn't know better, I could easily mistake that for a description of the Cell microarchitecture[0]

"...that combines a general-purpose PowerPC core of modest performance with streamlined coprocessing elements which greatly accelerate multimedia and vector processing applications, as well as many other forms of dedicated computation."

and

"To achieve the high performance needed for mathematically intensive tasks, such as decoding/encoding MPEG streams, generating or transforming three-dimensional data, or undertaking Fourier analysis of data, the Cell processor marries the SPEs and the PPE via EIB to give access, via fully cache coherent DMA (direct memory access), to both main memory and to other external data storage"

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_%28microprocessor%29

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#138

Post by jdmichal »

cycomanic wrote: post #103

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…

> 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?

If it's "truly groundbreaking", how are so many other entities which are being sued blindly stumbling into the exact same thing? That seems like a loose definition of the "obviousness" part of patent invalidation to me.

If an inventor doesn't want to manufacturer it, they're welcome to sell licenses or even the whole patent. That should mean going out and actually selling the damn thing. Make a case for its value to buyers, which should be easy for anything "truly groundbreaking", right?

But to just patent something, do absolutely nothing, then circle back around 15 years later and sue everything that might be infringing? That's the (potential strawman) situation that people are actually reacting to. I would not have any issue if these patents or licenses to them were actively being marketed and sold.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#139

Post by hrishi »

cycomanic wrote: post #103

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…

Agreed about size when it comes to suing for patent rights. However, the problem with patent trolls is the same as copyright trolls: they send out unimaginable amounts of spurious notifications in the hope that some will pay. The spam really is the problem here.

I have no problem with a company - any company - making a serious allegation against someone else using IP they hold. They deserve to be heard. Being able to send out 1000 of these in a day without consequence is a big problem.

How about something like an exponential ratchet or cool down period for losing patent lawsuits? Maybe the cost to file (or damages if you lose) doubles after every 10th lawsuit you lose against 10 different entities, for a year.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#140

Post by cglace »

jdmichal wrote: post #138
cycomanic wrote: post #103

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…

> 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? If it's "truly groundbreaking", how are so many other entities which are being sued blindly stumbling into the exact same thing? That seems like a loose definition of the "obviousness" part of patent invalidation to me. I…

Maybe they spent billions to stumble into it.
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