Man sues 92 companies over chip patent

Is it just me or there is ton of prior art from the companies that are sued...

Most of this patent bullshit is useless. Going to fill a patent for red menus right away... beware :-)

Filed in 1998. What crap. From asics to CPUs...this technique is not only "obvious" IMO, it has been used in chips produced years before 98.

WTF? Got to love a patent system that grants patents for the sake of granting pantents. (collecting revenue used for programs that have nothing to do with the patent system.)

Calling out that MIPS RISC chips are in "violation" of his patent point out that he has an invalid patent. MIPS significantly pre-dates his patent application. Gotta love the US patent system. Get some real experts in there to evaluate them before granting.

I'm sure it's far less impressive if you don't use ALL CAPS.

That's odd. Intel isn't listed, but Toys R Us and Wal-Mart are?

Wasn't the Alpha a MIPS RISC processor? Wouldn't that predate his patent filing?

Cheers,
John

There is no way this will hold up in court. All these companies have been doing it for years prior to this pantent. There is no basis for it.

For folks saying this won't hold up in court - that is not the intent. 

This is patent trolling at its best/worst. The hope is to get a few to settle relatively cheap, which may get others to think about settling for a bit more. Once it gets close to any sort of court date it will be dropped.

Unfortunately this is what the patent system has become - it is often cheaper to just settle than to fight it out. 

The only way this gets fixed is for the folks who are deemed to submit a frivolous lawsuit get punished (3X the attoreny fees of the folks defending. 

The firm/lawyer representing something deemed to be frivolous should be formally warned and either disbarred or heavily fined if a repeat offense occurs.

Of course this will never happen in the US as one of the best kept secrets is the lawyers have probably the most influential lobbying of all (much stronger than tobacco and gun lobby groups). 

The Democrats are expected to outspending the Republicans by about 9 or 10 to 1 in US house races in large part due to funding from groups like this (bet most folks thought the Republicans were better funded?)

....some of it is bound to stick. 

u think the guy is really this stupid? he's simply looking for a "get out of jail, pass go, collect 200 (million?) dollars...." oh yeah, and maybe throw boardwalk and parkplace in there too,,, 

anyone who does this is obviously looking for a loophole in capitalism.

Apart from throwing Americans in jail for not checking patents before granting the right to coheres innocent companies and individuals. Also, all the stuff about doing the job, checking for prior art, and rejecting all obvious and unpatentable, outside the US, stuff.

1. Fast easy process to reject and nullify patent inside the patent department and the legal system, depending on: how obvious, provable, simple, or intentional, it is. The more obvious, provable, simple to prove, or provably intentional, the quicker it is rejected, and any legal proceedings get an nice document to describe this proof, which they are required to verify and follow quickly, automatically dismissing cases where it is all verified. The more in depth it is to prove, the longer it would take. Normal halts until evidence in granted.

2. Jail time for people deliberately file false applications or challenges.

3. Free applications, free legal defence for people accused and people accusing (or course, if they want better legal service they pay for the extra themselves). Patents produce productivity and products, that generate taxes, that more than pay for the cost of this, and an bit less so for the present system. This also promotes more patents and productivity.

4. Automatic limits on the amount of royalty, and payouts, that can be paid. To stop profiteering, and encourage the spread of patents inside the extensive patent period.

etc.


Wayne.

Next time, instead of "Man sues..." go with "Dude sues..."

This Californian thought all of mankind was suing 92 companies.

:)

Jerry 's company is Silicon Laude and has been in business since 2005 and caters to the military industry.

Their web site goes by the same name.

I hope that more and more of these patent infringement suits get filed. 

Perhaps this will help show what a stupid and unworkeable system these patents are. 

They might have served a useful function in the past when things were much simpler and the corporate world worked differently, and perhaps people behaved more often in an ethical fashion. 

But now the big companies just ignore other peoples patents on the basis that they can either outlast or out lawyer the oppostition.

And if hardware patents were bas enough, software ones move the level of stupidity to a whole new level again.

Real time exchange with an external device while an application is running in real-time.

I think a mouse and a keyboard do this. They have re-patented the keyboard. Nice.

did you all *read* the filing? it seems to have been written for very specific applications (real-time debugging), by somebody that seems to know his/her crap. Aor are youjust commentign for the fsck of it?

There must be a whole industry out there that trolls by going through legacy architectures and patenting techniques that everyone used to regard as 'standard'. If this person is truly and inventor then there would be a trail of work leading to that invention, but like a lot of these I bet the inventor claims it just came to him in a dream(!).

(I had a colleague who got awarded a patent in 2003 for inventing a technique where you could detect the framing of a serial bit stream from a unique pattern preceeding that data. Its amazing what you can slip past the USPTO!)

Remember the Gordon Gekko character in Oliver Stone's "Wall Street"? From wikipedia: "His truncated catchphrase from the speech, 'Greed is good,' came to symbolise what some describe as the ruthless, profit-obsessed, simplistic, Ayn Randish, short-term corporate "philosphy" of the 1980s and 1990s". 
When the excess became recess and billions lost in equity, that had been built on pipe dreams and vaporware, the greed creed receded into the dark shadows of painful memories. Leave it to the lawyers and torte law to keep that dark flag waving. From the now infamous filing against MacDonalds for coffee that could burn you if you spilled it in your lap (DUH) to this absurd patent claim, there is a long list of scumbags who are no more than societal leeches. As Johnny Carson's Great Karnac would say "may the bird of paradise fly up their noses" and squat for a largish crap.

Definitely shouldn't have been granted. If it makes sense at all, it's violated by all kinds of stuff. The Transputer springs to mind. I'm confused what it has to do with MIPS, but I'm sure they could argue the R8000 was prior art (or, indeed, any system with a coprocessor).

I tend to hope that people doing this kind of thing are trying to persuade the big companies to shake up the patent system, rather than supporting it. The patents associated with my company are generally a source of embarrassment to me, rather than pride.

> Wasn't the Alpha a MIPS RISC processor?

Is that a troll? (May Alpha rest in peace.)

OK, so who used OCR to scan this in? Or is there really a company called

ATHEROS COl\11\1UNlCATIONS, INC.