Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

sparkfun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 186 posts

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#161

Post by theli0nheart »

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 provide them with economic incentives for it. Otherwise, people will simply keep their inventions to themselves, as they did before, and as many do now.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#162

Post by tsimionescu »

Nevermark wrote: post #150
tsimionescu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Requesting memory “dynamically” has nothing to do with “dynamic’ in ‘dynamic memory”. Requesting dynamically means that RAM is allocated while a program is running, not at compile or simply launch time. That is a software consideration. Dynamic RAM means memory that requires refreshes to maintain the information it stores. A completely unrelated hardware concern. The word dynamic simply means something that happens i…

> Requesting dynamically means that RAM is allocated while a program is running, not at compile or simply launch time. That is a software consideration.

Yes, that's part of my point. The lawsuit and patent clearly say dynamic/static RAM, they never talk about software and never mention requesting/allocating memory, dynamically or otherwise.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#163

Post by simiones »

rrss wrote: post #16
ohazi wrote: 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…

pretty sure the author is describing how the "runtime reconfiguration" described in the next two sentences of the lawsuit after the one you quoted is a memory allocator, not confused and thinking "dynamic RAM" means "dynamically allocated memory"

But that would also be a wrong interpretation: the runtime reconfiguration refers to something more similar to (but differen from) the programmable gate array of an FPGA, where the interconnect between all the components gets re-configured to achieve different logic while other computations are running.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#164

Post by simiones »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

I wonder if one could make trolling patent trolls self-sustaining. For example, let’s say you get hit with a demand letter. I review it and agree to finance your case. Using my resources, I prepare to invalidate the troll’s patents unless they settle for some amount less than their expected lifetime value from said patents. This gets split between you and me (after litigation costs), with maybe some of my share reser…

This only works if the patent troll believes the patent can be invalidated. This is rather hard for many patents - a lot of the time patent trolls own legitimate patents, they just try to apply them over-broadly. You would defeat them in court, but would not automatically invalidate their patent - you may only be able to show that their claims do not cover your work.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#165

Post by simiones »

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…

Isn't Microsoft (MSSQL) also a major player in the DB space?

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#166

Post by AlbertCory »

arvindamirtaa wrote: post #111
AlbertCory wrote: post #80

The patent is indeed expired (there's a website that will tell you that date, but I forget its URL), but they can still sue for infringement that took place before the expiration date. If the total damages are small (as it appears), then you are probably costing them more than the suit is worth. So I'd expect them to offer to settle for a token amount, to avoid having an official loss on the record. But IANAL and thi…

> offer to settle They can do that. But there isn't much leverage for them if they do that. They'll be giving their hand away and at that point SparkFun has almost no reason to pay a single dollar. Disclaimer : IANAL

At Google I went to a talk by a former patent troll about their business models.

They buy a patent, and then milk it for what it's still worth. Eventually that goes to zero.

If they lose a case publicly, then it's zero immediately. If they settle privately, then the patent is still useful against other victims. The main goal isn't to get $$ from SparkFun -- it's to keep SparkFun from destroying their asset.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#167

Post by mannykannot »

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…

There is only one claim, and the whole claim is a bit more specific that that. This prompts a couple of questions for those who know more about these things than I do:

1) When a claim consists of a conjunction of clauses, must an allegedly infringing device match all the clauses in order for it to be infringing that claim, or can each clause be infringed independently of whether the others are? At first sight, the latter seems unworkable, as an effective way to specify something is to say "it is a sort of X, except that..."

2) One of those clauses specifies "A plurality of media processing units, each media processing unit having an input/output coupled to at least one of the addressable memory input/outputs and comprising:..." (four short paragraphs follow, each describing, in general terms, some aspect of these units.) For the purposes of determining infringement of this patent, would any component matching these four paragraphs be considered a media processing unit?

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#168

Post by mannykannot »

zh3 wrote: post #126
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…

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.

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#169

Post by JumpCrisscross »

URSpider94 wrote: post #85
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

I wonder if one could make trolling patent trolls self-sustaining. For example, let’s say you get hit with a demand letter. I review it and agree to finance your case. Using my resources, I prepare to invalidate the troll’s patents unless they settle for some amount less than their expected lifetime value from said patents. This gets split between you and me (after litigation costs), with maybe some of my share reser…

In that case, the troll can almost always just drop the suit and then you have no claim against them.

> the troll can almost always just drop the suit and then you have no claim against them

I do not believe that would suspend an inter partes review [1]. Of course, if this method of relief is not available the above wouldn't work.

[1] https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/trials/inter-partes-revie...

Re: SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

#170

Post by colanderman »

mannykannot wrote: post #167
roelschroeven wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is only one claim, and the whole claim is a bit more specific that that. This prompts a couple of questions for those who know more about these things than I do: 1) When a claim consists of a conjunction of clauses, must an allegedly infringing device match all the clauses in order for it to be infringing that claim, or can each clause be infringed independently of whether the others are? At first sight, the la…

Regarding (1), yes, it must match all. Because of this, patents usually enumerate variants as separate claims. E.g., the 1st claim will be something very broad. The 2nd claim will be, "claim 1, with feature X" [1]. The 3rd claim, "claim 1, with feature Y". The 4th claim, "claim 2, with feature X". etc. This (a) allows the inventor to claim each aspect of their invention separately; (b) since claims are invalidated independently, allows the inventor to still claim the very specific combination of all parts of their invention, if the broader claims are invalidated; and (c) allows the inventor to claim refinements of the invention which might otherwise be considered novel and therefore patentable by someone else.

This patent is odd in that it doesn't follow that pattern. Just one solitary claim.

(For reference, a random unrelated patent I happen to be reading now uses 26 claims to basically say "we invented a slightly different way to lay out RAID-6 parity blocks".)

[1] The specific verbiage used is usually something like "the system/method of claim N, further comprising [additional mechanism]", or "the system/method of claim N, wherein [specific design choice]".

Post reply on HN