SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll • Hacker News Board

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#171

Post by zh3 » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 5:41 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #168

zh3 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bit of a stretch to claim MIMD/vector processing covers that particular product [0]; maybe they're going after that because it's got a Mali 400 GPU (in which case I'd just refer them to ARM's lawyers). [0] http://web.archive.org/web/20160909142123/https://www.sparkf...

The trolls presumably picked on SparkFun rather than ARM because the latter has the resources to fight back hard.

I once had a similiar situation, where we were going to be sued if we didn't pay up. I sent back a letter asking them to explicitly identify the infringing item; never heard back.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#172

Post by justshowpost » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 5:44 PM UTC

silexia wrote: post #157

Patent trolls are pure evil. The solution is to dismantle the system scummy patent attorneys built and use to steal from good companies. The entire patent system only serves to prevent competition through a government enforced monopoly. Why is there only one big aircraft manufacturer (Boeing) left in the US? Patents. Why is there only one major DB maker (Oracle)? Patents. Get rid of patents and you will greatly incre…

No way. Without patents some angry consumer would write such comment on lamb leather with goose feather. Just because ball-point pens, ink and cellulose paper would be... a trade secrets. Now think how much collaboration in exchange for royalties in your PC and whatever network equipment you just used to publish this opinion.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#173

Post by lamontcg » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 7:47 PM UTC

adrian_b wrote: post #100

marcosdumay wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The binding energy of protons & neutrons into nuclei is less than 1% of their mass, so the energy required to separate a nucleus, like an alpha particle, into all its constituent protons and neutrons, is negligible in comparison with the energies required for interactions so intense that they would generate any other hadrons except protons and neutrons, for example pi mesons, which would expose the inner structure of…

Yes, but very smart people are often hyperfocused on their own particular bellybutton lint like I said.

For someone whose whole job revolves around the quark structure of nuclei they may see it important enough to "correct" someone who only thinks of nuclei as protons and neutrons flying around each other in relative isolation like planets.

Add a dash or ten of Asperger's (we're talking about nuclear physicists here) and that's how you wind up with an expert "correcting" a non-expert about a casual fact which is 99.9% correct.

Thinking that the expert was too dumb to know that fact is probably the wrong interpretation.

Thinking that the expert was making a social/communication mistake is probably the right one.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#174

Post by patentatt » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 9:02 PM UTC

rrss wrote: post #160

patentatt wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do receive bonuses for doing more work, not necessarily for granting a patent. And you’re dead wrong on the second part, it’s way way way way easier to write a rejection than issue a patent because there’s a good chance the applicant will file a continuation and you’ll get more counts for the same work for an application that you already know well and have done the legwork on. So no, examiners are not incentiviz…

There's sort of a lot of literature that suggests that the USPTO does have a number of incentives to grant invalid patents. Even if they are all mistaken, this suggests to me that the issue is not as clear-cut as you say. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1756-2171.12... > This means that the fastest way for an examiner to obtain two counts is to dispose of an application through a first-action allowanc…

Thank you for replying with citations and data - very cool way to debate!

So I'm surprised at what these sources say, and I think it may come down to tech center / art unit differences. I worked in a very 'high technology' art unit, where first action allowances were unheard of. A SPE would laugh you out of their office if you proposed a first action allowance. I don't think I ever even heard of one in my art unit. So first action allowances just weren't on the table for us in any meaningful way. But, I suppose it's possible that examiners in some other art unit may look at it that way.

I also disagree with the statement about RCE's. Examiners definitely get (or used to get) a count for a first action after an RCE. That first action is a gimme in terms of difficulty, as the examiner already knows the application well and knows the applicant well. In fact, it seems like from the USPTO's website that they're working to incentivize first action allowances over examiners encouraging continuation practice, likely for this very reason:

https://www.uspto.gov/patents/initiatives/patent-examiner-co...

The other thing I'll say is that all issued patents aren't the same. A patent with very narrow claims is harmless. So just incentivizing issuance isn't necessarily bad. In fact, most people don't realize it's very easy to get a patent issued, as long as your claim is super long and therefore super narrow. We used to call them 'two-handers' as in, it takes both hands to cover it up on a printed page. Encouraging more of those doesn't really harm anybody (except the applicant).

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#175

Post by rytor718 » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 10:25 PM 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…

I know nothing about patent law but this strikes me as false. I cannot be sued for turning on a radio in a vehicle that I bought or rented. I've never heard of a court thats accepted such frivolous claims either, nor of any law that asserts such.

The manufacturer of that radio can possibly be downstream sued, sure. That sounds at least plausible if they're assembling said radio without proper license for the parts. But simply using a radio in my car doesn't strike me as something enforceable nor legitimate in any way.

How do you figure a user downstream could be sued for not licensing a radio in a car they bought/rented? You're claiming we're all legitimate targets at this point in the eyes of the law (anyone using a radio in a car) so I'd like to understand this.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#176

Post by adambatkin » Thu, Jul 01, 2021, 11:30 PM UTC

theli0nheart wrote: post #161

ncphil wrote: post #136

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 ar…

> 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. First, citation needed. Second, these two things are not at odds. People require incentives. If you want people to submit their inventions to the public domain, you do need to pro…

The citation is literally The US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#177

Post by theli0nheart » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 1:12 AM UTC

adambatkin wrote: post #176

theli0nheart wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. First, citation needed. Second, these two things are not at odds. People require incentives. If you want people to submit their inventions to the public domain, you do need to pro…

The citation is literally The US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."

I asked for a citation of something that explicitly did not mention rewards to inventors / authors to accomplish this goal.

What you cited backs my argument, specifically that owners of intellectual property have exclusive right to their discoveries and writings during the period of protection.

Rewards were an intended outcome of patents from day one, as it was literally included in the U.S. Constitution.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#178

Post by randomswede » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 6:17 AM UTC

Traster wrote: post #148

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…

>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. Yeah this is where my spidey sense started tingling. He mocks "Dynamic RAM" but I don't understand the joke, there is dynamic and static RAM and presumably this patent is talking about loading the configuration at run-time as opposed to us…

Almost all RAM in the last few decades has been DRAM, rather than SRAM.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#179

Post by robomartin » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 3:24 PM UTC

AlbertCory wrote: post #109

robomartin wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Does someone offer a comprehensive "Patent it yourself" course?

This would be very useful, not necessarily to actually write patents but rather to truly understand the subject. It could save entrepreneurs time and money and, yes, some could actually use the knowledge to write their own patents.

Patents are very expensive. The small entrepreneur often has to choose between protecting IP and having cash to run the business. Spending $15K to $25K on a patent is out of the question for most small businesses. In that context, the idea of writing multiple patents is nothing less than fantasy.

Such a course, if well done, could easily be worth a few thousand dollars. It would also help equalize the disparity of IP "power" between large corporations and the little guy. When someone has the financials to write hundreds of patents per year, while the other side can barely (financially) approach one every five years, that creates a serious asymmetry that is hard to resolve.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#180

Post by jhgb » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

tsimionescu wrote: post #125

cjtrowbridge wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As far as I understand, the claim is actually that an Alpha particle is made up of quarks and gluons, the same number you would find in 2 protons and 2 neutrons, but that the proton and neutron are different things. It sounds like there's a very technical distinction about exactly how you define a particle. Essentially, I believe that the claim is something like saying that modeling an alpha particle as 2 neutrons an…

But that sounds like a difference between two models, not a difference between two physical objects. To me it seems that if you were to follow this line of thinking religiously, you could then never say things like "an atom of carbon has six protons", since, well, they're not quite protons according to this logic.