SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll
sparkfun.com
sparkfun.com
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. SparkFun claims that when the patent discusses processing multiple streams of data that it's discussing variable length arrays, but it's not. They claim that a MAU doesn't exist, but a MAU is a multiplier-accumulator unit. SparkFun seems to be entirely confusing the motivation of the engineer filing the patent in 2008 with the motivation of the patent trolls. I've seen many patents that are fluff and nonsense, but this one is a solid patent.
The infringement claim is probably bogus; I don't see any evidence that the pcDuino infringes the one narrow claim in the patent. I hope that SparkFun can quickly get rid of this lawsuit. I don't get any enjoyment out of criticizing SparkFun's post, but having spent the time to look over the patent, I feel that I should comment.
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 not just patent the whole shebang.
Well, at least Sparkfun's Nate is out to call you out.
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.
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20160909142123/https://www.sparkf...
"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 these units coupled so that output from one can be used as input for the next.
The processors can work in parallel. They can - read instructions and data from RAM - execute the instructions to process the data - output the results "
That's it (unless I missed something, but I don't think so). That is not very narrow. On the contrary: it describes pretty much any multi-processor system. It certainly doesn't describe a particular implementation technique.
"...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"
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?
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]".
That this patent does none of this I agree suggests a lawyer did not get paid enough, or the patent was intended to publish the ideas (i.e. stop the "big players" from copying an idea and patenting it).
As-is, depending on how you squint and read it, the single claim either is too specific for anything but a clone of the product it's describing to infringe, or so generic it's just describing prior art.
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 using something like Flash. What's funny about this?
As far as I understood the parts he was narrating it sounds less like malloc and more like a reprogrammable instruction memory. It's certainly not something unique and patentable but might be valid context for a real innovation.
> Al is claiming that they have patent number 6289434 which they quickly start referring to as patent ‘434. Can I tell you how humorous it is that an attorney feels it necessary to shorten a 7-digit number to a 4-character abbreviation? Thanks Al. That really saves me some time.
The 3 digit “abbreviation” is a common thing in patent law. It’s because, when in court, they refer to them by those last three if they’re unambiguous (to save time). So it would make sense to use the “abbreviated” form in the legal filings.
Now, about it being expired:
> Patent 6289434 was written in 1998 and granted in 2001. I’ll start by pointing out that patents are valid for 20 years from the date on which the application for the patent was filed, so 2018, but I’m no patent attorney.
IANAL as well, but Google Patents[0] lists it as expired worldwide… Can anyone chime in about this?
It's fair game to sue on an expired patent, because in some cases, you can collect for past damages that accrued up to six years in the past. That's probably why the complaint focused on an older product, potentially sold during the patent term.
> 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 and then give it back when your function is done) goes back to the dawn of computing.
No, this is wrong.
Nathan is referring to dynamic memory allocation, which is what malloc does, but that isn't what this line in the lawsuit is talking about.
Dynamic RAM, or DRAM is RAM that stores state in a capacitor. This is what your laptop uses -- DDR4 SDRAM is "Double data rate (version 4) synchronous dynamic RAM". In DRAM, the charge on the capacitors slowly dissipates, so DRAM needs to be "refreshed" periodically, which is why it's referred to a "dynamic" RAM.
Static RAM, or SRAM, is RAM that stores state in a register-like structure (usually cross-coupled inverters). It's "static" in that it doesn't need to be refreshed -- as long as the supply voltage is maintained, the bits stored in an SRAM will remain intact.
I agree that this patent lawsuit is bullshit, and I really hate to derail the conversation, but I'm surprised by Nathan's misunderstanding here, given that SparkFun makes embedded boards that use all kinds of memory. SRAM/DRAM isn't unusual terminology. The distinction doesn't even matter in the context of this line in the lawsuit, but if you're going to make a point of nitpicking about something, you should really make sure that you're actually right about it first...
- What are alpha particles made of?
- When an element undergoes alpha decay, its atomic number is reduced by two. Where do the protons go?
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 also it's going crazy fast when it is created so that's why it's dangerous. But then once it takes those electrons from somewhere it becomes normal helium. You just don't want that happening in your body.
It seems like the other commenters in this thread are alluding to the electron thing maybe? Not exactly sure what point they're making.
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 and 2 protons loses some information that you would have if you model it as 12 quarks, because the 12 quarks interact in (slightly) different ways than a proton and a neutron would.
This is sort of because the discoveries were made before people were really aware of helium nuclei, electrons/positrons, or high energy EM, they just ran physical experiments in a lab and saw there were different kinds of radiation that had different physical properties, and under close inspection of those properties, the nature of the radiation was deduced.
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.
This is an important feature of nature, whose consequence is that the most convenient way of understanding the world is that the first approximation, which is useful for almost all practical purposes, is to consider everything as composed of protons, neutrons and electrons, which are bound by strong, electromagnetic and gravitational forces and that there are also positrons (antielectrons), which can be generated in sufficiently intense interactions and which will annihilate with electrons.
Only for few purposes it is necessary to go beyond this and take into account that there are many other hadrons composed of quarks, besides protons and neutrons, and that there are also other leptons.
The distinction between these 2 level of approximation is important and whoever likes to think that alpha particles as not being made of protons of neutrons fails to get it.
Of course, for many purposes you can ignore the strong nuclear forces and you can consider the surrounding world as being made of electrons and of a little less than 300 kinds of long lived nuclei, which are bound by electromagnetic and gravitational forces.
At this other level of approximation, you should ignore the proton-neutron composition of any nucleus, but when you talk about alpha particles, you normally mean helium nuclei having a kinetic energy high enough to not be negligible in comparison with the binding energies of nuclei, so you are not in a situation when you can ignore the nuclear compositions.
In any physical model, it is important to specify clearly which is the level of approximation at which it works. Mixing randomly various levels of approximation of the structure of things is usually a bad strategy.
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.
> Dynamic ram? Can I poke fun at them for not knowing what RAM is? Yes I can.
He's trying to nitpick about the term "dynamic" in this context, which he has misunderstood to mean "dynamic allocation" (i.e. the alternative to "static allocation"). The phrase "static or dynamic RAM" is basically never used to refer to memory allocation, it refers to the physical construction of the memory. This is especially true if the paragraph is next to a block diagram that includes an ALU... They are five levels removed from any sort of allocator.
The rest of the paragraph doesn't describe a memory allocator, it's describing runtime reconfiguration of a circuit, which you can do (and often do do) using a statically allocated configuration block or even a hard-wired dedicated memory. Again, nothing to do with malloc.
Whether a configuration memory is SRAM or DRAM based is immaterial, but patent language likes to make a point of enumerating the possibilities.
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's a bit absurd to imagine, but if someone has a patent on a CPU design, which is then used in a radio, which is installed in a car, which is driven by a taxi driver, then the patent holder can in principle sue the taxi driver for using their radio without licensing the patent.
In practice, patent trolls will figure out who they can sue who is big enough to extract $$, but not so big as to run the risk of them fighting back and invalidating the patent.
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.
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.
IMO you are being much too generous in your interpretation of this trolling.
The claim is that pcDuino is infringing because it has a Cortex A9 with addressable memory. This chip does not have any of the fancy reconfiguration you have in mind, but the trolls believe it implements their patent, so I don't see how they can mean what you think they do.
I'm nitpicking about a nitpick, and I feel kind of bad for derailing the conversation, because the patent assertion is completely ridiculous.
I just think that Nathan shouldn't have made the jab about malloc, because making that kind of mistake detracts from his otherwise very valid criticism.
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 final application of the device or the nature of the data to be processed.
> Therefore, if a fixed function device must adaptively process data, then it must commit silicon resources to process all possible flavors of the data.
> The inventors therefore sought to provide a new apparatus for implementing systems on a chip that will enable the user to achieve performance of fixed-function implementation at a lower cost.
> The lower cost is achieved by removing redundancy from the system. The redundancy is removed by re-using groups of computational and storage elements in different configurations.
> The cost is further reduced by employing only static or dynamic ram as a means for holding the state of the system.
> All of this reconfiguration can take place dynamically in run-time without any degradation of performance over fixed-function implementations.
> The present invention is therefore an apparatus for adaptively dynamically reconfiguring groups of computations and storage elements in run-time to process multiple separate streams of data and control at varying rates.
As you can see, it's saying that rather than pinning RAM (as previous fixed-function approaches did in the 80s), this system allows you to request memory dynamically.
I mean, it's a garbage patent anyway and not really worth so much time trying to analyze what they are claiming, but Nathan isn't wrong - the patent really isn't referring to SRAM and DRAM.
[0] https://cdn.sparkfun.com/assets/home_page_posts/3/9/1/7/Alta...
The memory in question is a tiny, fixed-size block of RAM inside the chip that's directly connected to the various logic blocks. There is no way to allocate or request anything -- that memory is all you've got, and all of the bits have been spoken for by the time the chip is taped out.
What they seem to be describing is something resembling a C union mapped directly onto that RAM block. That's not dynamic allocation, that's "these bits are interpreted differently depending on which logic blocks are active, so that we don't have to have a separate RAM block for each functional unit, because that would be a waste of space."
Every legal combination and order of configuration structures in this RAM block is specified and tested, that's why it's not dynamic allocation. If anything, it's a really big list of possible static allocations.
I agree with you that the SRAM/DRAM distinction is immaterial, but that's just how patents are written.
But of course, all this is a complete tangent. Nothing that SparkFun makes has anything to do with any of this.
Sadly I suspect the world we live in isn't so reasonable.
Or more specifically, I think you’re overestimating the expertise of the examiner in the relevant field.
Edit: removed example, it was wrong.
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.
I must have missed the "as you can see" part since I see nothing in the quoted passages that would contradict the notion of a device configured by the contents of some SRAM or DRAM cells. At the very best one could say that the text might be ambiguous. After all, "cost is further reduced by employing only static or dynamic ram as a means for holding the state of the system" is a statement that you could easily make about a bog-standard von Neumann computer as well.
I have no idea how you can misread this to think it refers to requesting memory dynamically - they explicitly say "static or dynamic ram" - they claim the system can work with static RAM just as well as dynamic RAM. How do you or SparkFun come up thinking they are saying dynamic RAM is better?
"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.
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 in time so is used in a myriad of otherwise quite different computing concepts.
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.
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 claim construction you give up. I worked on tons of claim construction briefs.
I'll read those claims a little later this evening.
[1] https://passingpatentbarwithprg.tumblr.com/post/9992218513/w...
I'll save everyone the trouble and tell you without reading them: they're bullshit and so are most software/computer patents. We really need to come together as an industry and fight this crap. Huge props to SparkFun for taking on these bottom feeders.
So the big companies, e.g. IBM and Microsoft, are not on our side at all. Neither are ACM and IEEE. I've been on this issue for a long, long time, and it really WILL take a bottom-up revolution. We will get no support whatsoever from the people who should be leading.
[1] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2399580
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?
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.
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.
They also have a number of pages on their website related to this topic, which might be worth reading first[1].
[0] https://store.nolo.com/products/patent-it-yourself-pat.html
For example, in chemical cases, you cannot have your own definition of "methylated." There are standard definitions of terms. Regrettably, in software not so much.
This doesn't read like most patents which tend to be lower on the details, and longer on the claims, I suspect that this was either written directly by the engineer, or written to effectively publish the details of the design to avoid others patenting their stuff out from under them (or both). Probably the original company went under and the patent was onsold to the troll.
The actual claims have nothing to do with SRAM vs. DRAM (or even malloc) - my (lay) reading of these claims are that you have to have:
- memory containing instructions and data - more than one processor containing a multiplier, an ALU, a logic unit, a bit processing unit - all the media processors running in parallel
this does describe pretty much any modern multicore chip, or graphics chip, and perhaps more closely Sony's Cells for example.
As a sometimes computer architect having a bunch of CPUs execute code and data out of shared memory is 'obvious' (and was at the time, I was building media processors before 1997, and frankly was 30 years before). As far as prior art - I'd consider any multi-cpu mainframe starting in the 1960's onwards to be valid prior art here
If I were Sparkfun I'd pull in Arm, Intel, AMD, nVidia, Sony, IBM .... and nuke this thing from orbit
Again the idea of sharing main memory between more than one CPU is very old (and arguably 'obvious to an ordinary practitioner of the art' who had taken a few comp sci classes)
I mentioned nVidia/Sony et al because they're the ones selling multicore CPUs right now and have the most to lose to this sort of predatory troll
One tip on reading patent - ignore most of the diagrams and description, and go straight to the claims. The claims are the only valid part of the patent. In this case, all the static/dynamic RAM, signals, memory cache, and malloc stuffs are irrelevant and misdirection.
This patent has only 1 claim [1]. The claim has a series of elements making a number of conditions for the patent. Notice that semicolons separate each claim elements. That means these are AND-conditions. All these conditions need to be met to fit the patent. Also notice the colons. These list the sub-elements or sub-conditions.
Reading the claim. It seems to be a system with a number of processors of different kinds. There's some memory with input/output ports. The memory holds the instructions and data. The input/output ports of the processors connect (coupled) to the input/output ports of the memory to read the instructions and data. Do computation on the data based on the instruction. Spit out the result. The kinds of processors are: multiplier, arithmetic unit, arithmetic logic unit, and a bit manipulation unit. The processors run simultaneously.
To defeat this patent, you can list prior arts. This is the most damaging because it invalidates the whole patent. Or you can go by the claim conditions. You can either claim your product doesn't have any one of the kind of the processors (no bit manipulation), or the processor doesn't read instruction/data from memory (instructions are hard-coded or a processor gets its input from another processor), or the processor doesn't connect to the memory directly (via a bus or via a data switch or via special registers), or the processor doesn't do computation according to the instruction (e.g. a doubler always double the data), or your processors run serially in some fashion, etc.
And then there's the legal definition of the terms in the claim, such as what is a multiplier, an arithmetic unit, an ALU, what's a bit manipulation unit, and what's "coupling." This process is called claim construction and done by the court via precedents and the intents described in the description of the patent. Many times a patent lawsuit falls apart during the claim construction phase because the definition of the terms don't apply to the sued product.
All processors are the same. Each processor has the following required components: multiplier, arithmetic unit, arithmetic logic unit, and a bit manipulation unit. Each internal component has input/output ports which connect to the input/output ports of the processor. The ALU and bit components can run concurrently to the other components.
They should link to the update to that story:
Transcript: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/transcript
Audio: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/when-patents-attack-par...
One key takeaway: If you yield to a patent troll and agree to give them some percentage of your earnings, and later that patent gets invalidated - you still have to keep paying.
This broke my brain. How does this make any sense whatsoever??!!
It makes sense to sign it because they have you over a barrel.
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.
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.
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.
However, one real difference is that it seems large companies aren't particularly looking to enforce patents like this one. If this patent were in the hands of IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc, would they actually be suing competitors (the ones that hadn't signed on to a non-aggression agreement), or would they consider it junk for purely defensive purposes?
Given that small businesses generally aren't receiving such shakedown letters from large corporations, I'm guessing the latter. Large companies have determined that it's not in their best interest to pursue such action. While for small non-practicing entities a few junk patents are all they have, and so they might as well try fooling some people.
Correct. A patent is for protecting your profits after you invent something, right? So if you aren't making anything then all you are doing is fruitlessly locking up some novel insight for a period of time. You also aren't experiencing a damage to your zero profit. Worse, what we are seeing is questionably novel patents being used years after their time to browbeat people that actually do things and actually make things.
I would not weep if we were to abolish patent laws. I've been told they are there to help and support inventors but I've seen little evidence that this is the case.
But I'd like to examine this concept as patent trolls as heroes for the little guy - are there any actual examples of this, at least in the domain this usually is found (software)?
The only example I can think of is the inventor, who does indeed come up with concepts which he may only journal - ironically it used to be there was provision for this, having prior art on the subject invalidates the patent, even if only in concept. The difference being that this precludes the inventor from being sued for having invented, versus the first to file as it is now, which is what creates the whole pyramid of perverse incentives in my view.
Patent trolls typically have done no work or have no prior art, subsisting solely on "purchasing" invented arts - i.e. they have done no previous work.
As you say, this mainly creates a system where the 'little guy' just loses out, or people who have done nothing seek to swindle. You can have a system which protects concepts only if you also allow in the system that it is a system only to be used in an actual defensive situation, such as an inventor with an idea being protected from a large company trying to sue for so called copying (under copyright law)
Of course you would need to create a second classification at present, i.e. if you actually create a widget then you can only claim a limited right to exactly thay widget and nothing else - just the hint if non specificity would mean that the 'patent' was invalid. And a broader class of patent which would be claimed only in defense, i.e. public or private prior art.
What is broken seems to be the implementation (heh) not the concept of patents.
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 them as a matter of policy. So their clients get the benefit of also deterring suits just because they're represented by this insurance company.
2. You can't sue a parent troll for patent infringement, since they don't have any technology business. They are only "companies" on paper.
I did some work on this years before the article, while in law school. Seems to be defunct now.
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 to just collect premiums, payout claims as little as possible, and if claims get too high you re-assess your actuarial tables and raise premiums where appropriate.
Insurance companies simply aren't in the business of solving the root-cause of any given problem. They're in the business of risk analysis & pooled risk & selling financial risk mitigation on that basis.
Insurance companies generally hold vast amounts of assets - and some already shift their investment strategy based on policy, e.g. climate change and other sustainability goals (see https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-i...), work with large customers to reduce their risk exposure or indirectly go after the root causes, e.g. by exiting risk-prone markets (basically, no insurance any more for flood or fire prone areas).
I also don't see any market that insurance companies could exit to reduced patent trolling.
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.
There is precedent for insurance underwriters to attempt to modify/reduce the risks of their underwriting.
Aviation insurance often comes with training or other restrictions more severe than what the FAA requires. “Coverage shall not be in effect until pilot completes FlightSafety initial. Coverage will then be only for supervised operations by a pilot meeting the open pilot requirements listed in ___ until a further 25 hours of supervised operating experience is completed.” or similar.
UL (Underwriters’ Laboratories) origin story is from building insurance underwriters seeking to understand their risk.
Every envelope has to be opened. The content can be the usual wordy mess and be made to look a lot like the official kind of mail they receive so that it all has to be kept and sorted to make sure nothing important is skipped.
I'm surprised a clever 501c3 isn't quietly buying up patents, and burying them, or using them as legal weapons against companies that abuse the patent system.
Just did a quick search, and there is a company.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-takes-another-step-t...
You've more or less explained IBM. You cant come at IBM because their patent portfolio is so vast, they you're bound to be doing something that infringes on some patent they have.
When I working there you wouldn't get promoted from being an IC to a manager unless you had at least 10 patents to your name during your tenure there.
There have been efforts along these lines, e.g.: RPX [0] and Allied Security Trust [1]. And the general idea is called Defensive Patent Aggregation [2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RPX_Corporation
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allied_Security_Trust
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_patent_aggregation
But the dismissal judgment is enlightening about what happens when you sit on a patent for 20 years and then start to sue people. The 'marking requirement' referred to is that you stamp products with a US patent number.
> The '434 Patent was valid for 20 years from the filing date, meaning that it expired on February 27, 2018. See 35 U.S.C. § 154(a)(2). Because Altair did not bring suit until after the patent had expired, it is entitled to relief only if it can ultimately establish notice of infringement prior to the patent's expiration date. Here, Altair would need to prove either that it satisfied the marking requirement or that neither it nor any of its licensees ever made a product which needed to be marked.
It seems the fact of never having licensed your patent to anyone allows you to avoid having to give notice to infringers. I'm guessing the damages limitations around non-marking are drafted to avoid a situation where someone sees a product, sees it and copies it thinking that because it has no patent number, it hasn't been patented. There appear to be other 'constructive notice' provisions. But it seems a little perverse that you're at an advantage, notice-wise, as a patent troll if you avoid the marking requirements by never attempting to license the patent to anyone in 20 years, and separately nobody takes a second look when searching for patents applicable to their products. Normally both those things point to the patent not being useful or valuable from a licensee perspective.
https://casetext.com/case/altair-logix-llc-v-asus-computer-i...
(Morbid detail: the patent was issued on September 11, 2001. Somehow the USPTO worked through that day.)
To me, it looks like the patent is for.... "hooking up memory together with several processors in a system, and having that system process 'media' data in parallel" with "processor" defined as "multiplier unit + arithmetic unit + arithmetic logic unit + bit manipulation unit" (quotes mine, not from the patent text). There's also a bit of stuff about how the arithmetic logic unit and the bit manipulation unit should be able to "operate concurrently" with some of the other units. It seems like this patent is basically for the idea of parallel processing on modern computers in general. If so, most of the computing industry infringes this patent today.
I'm not a hardware expert, though, and it's possible I'm missing something and the claim is more narrow. It depends on the exact definition of those processor components and whether this ability of some CPU sub-units to "operate concurrently" with others is common on modern computers.
All that aside, the patent seems to have no intellectual value whatsoever. I have no idea what the history of parallel processing is, but it definitely predates the writing of this patent in 1998. The only thing that seems even possibly new is a tiny bit of text specifying which units should be able to operate concurrently with other units. Is that supposed to be the novelty that we're protecting with the power of the law for 20 years?
The point of patents is that the public benefits from novel invention ideas being published, in exchange for the publisher getting exclusive rights to the idea for a few years. The public can build upon the idea sooner if it's published earlier. In what universe do we imagine that someone reads this patent claim and is enlightened and inspired to build upon it?
How is this patent anything but yet another insane, horrific abuse of the system?
This diagram, for example, has some resemblance to his claims: https://demin.ws/blog/english/2012/11/22/personal-mini-compu...
Compare to his drawing: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/67/ad/43/be96187...
But, personally, I don't understand why we're able to patent something just by making narrow definitions of specific "ways" of doing things in parallel, especially when they don't feel "novel".
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 reserved for the eventual holdout who fights and gets their patents invalidated.
Less emotionally satisfying than invalidation. But far more scalable and thus threatening to the model.
The threat would only work if it were in respect of a large swathe of the troll’s portfolio. Agree it would be meaningless if done against a few of their patents, or if the patents were trivial to file for.
"I look forward to the discovery processes during this lawsuit as well as reviewing the prior art associated with this patent. I will be creating a blog to document this process for public consumption as soon as the lawsuit is filed."
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...
I had a loud and irritating neighbour who patronized me (everyone) and I had hard time coping until I gave the guy a stupid nickname. When I was able to laugh the whole ordeal went away and no longer stressed me. This blog post is the same: it helps SparkFun shifting the seriousness of the threat into something laughable so it can be handled in a calm manner as it should be and to not loose another night of sleep over it. How exact or rational are the snarky remarks about the pattern doesn't really matter.
Since the initial demand from the plaintiff already names a price for settlement, that's a huge sign they aren't serious. The fact it's $500 further reinforces this is a routine bulk scam. In theory, if you don't respond at all they could get a default judgement when you no-show at the eventual hearing date. The odds are overwhelming they don't ever show up for these, plus they'll (usually) also need to write and pay to file some actual, specific argument in advance of the hearing which you'll be able to see (when and if they actually filed anything) putting you on notice they are actually playing.
If you're a cautious person and you or your firm have significant enough business interests to care at all, then the prudent thing to do is send it to your lawyer and tell them you authorize 15m billing to read it and 15m to draft a response, basically saying "fuck off". That way you're fully covered from a legal standpoint. If you're just a guy in a garage selling some stuff but aren't incorporated and don't really make any money, then you could just ignore it. Once again, this is only because they filed a suit. Just a random letter from an obvious, known troll should be tossed. If you decide to respond, be careful your diligent lawyer doesn't run up >$500 just drafting up a routine response (which happens).
If you're a garage guy, you can probably find a pretty decent 'mad libs' suit response online you can adapt yourself to just file. It doesn't HAVE to come from a lawyer (although if it were a serious suit it's always a good idea to get a lawyer's input). At $500, the troll will lose money if they respond to you at all (they already had to pay some minimum filing and service fees).
I've had countless dozens of these patent troll registered letters and zero of them ever amounted to anything at all. In all these years and across dozens of products and technologies I've had exactly ONE sort-of serious patent claim. It was easily recognizable because it was a "letter of concern" from a long-time leading company in that product space. They've been around decades and have lots of patents. In some ways, they pretty much invented the whole area. So I took that pretty seriously. I talked about it with a good patent lawyer and also read the patent and it's clear that our software wasn't actually doing what their hardware did 15 years ago. Our approach worked great but it was a bit of unorthodox counter-intuitive cleverness (aka hack). We called them up and determined they didn't really know "how" our software worked and were just assuming it might infringe their patent. We told them it didn't but they were still kind of concerned, so our lawyer suggested "Hey, they seem pretty reasonable and they aren't that much bigger than you, why don't you just fly down there and white board just enough of your approach that they understand it's very different."
So we flew down and met with their CEO and CTO and explained until their CTO said "Oh, cooool." They went and talked for a few minutes, came back, thanked us for coming down and gave us a really nice tour before we left. Yes, we possibly disclosed a small part of a trade secret but the reality was those guys were never going to compete with us as we were going after different markets. Also, they clearly had nowhere near the low-level software chops to emulate what our code did. At the end of the day, the typical lawyer approach could have put us through discovery and perhaps a summary judgement (and a hundred grand in costs (min)) but looking at the circumstances and just being reasonable was the smart play. In all my years in business I've never been to court over a patent thing and only had to go to court once because, early on, I did a deal with a crazy sue-happy partner who I didn't do enough due diligence on. Lesson learned - and in that case, the litigious idiot ended up dropping his suit when time came for discovery and then paying all our costs just to get out of the counter-suit we had to file. So... worked out okay but it was expensive, distracting and annoying for six months.
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.
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.
> We offer expertise in all phases of patent monetization. Our team has helped inventors and companies alike establish licensing revenue streams from IP. We specialize in uncovering hidden value in IP assets, and monetizing such assets at a price point that maximizes value.
They know that it's a troll company, The "About Us" is essentially "DO YOU HOLD A PATENT?!? CALL US NOW TO MAKE $$$"
If there About Us was more along the lines of "our mission is to protect inventors and represent creative types.." then I would be more inclined to believe the people working there might not be fully aware.
Source: former examiner, current patent attorney who works with examiners regularly.
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 allowance.
I think this is what you are saying.
> Disposing of an application through an abandonment or RCE usually requires working through a series of responses and amendments by the applicant and issuing a second office action, none of which earns the examiner any counts.18 As a result, it is more time consuming to earn the second count through a rejection than through a grant. As others have noted, the count system thus essentially rewards examiners for granting patents (Merges, 1999; Jaffe and Lerner, 2004; Lemley and Shapiro, 2005)
But this disagrees on whether the examiners get points for the rest of the work on the same application.
https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/publications/2017-decreasing-...
https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Frakes_Michael_IPSC_paper...
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/0895330054048650
> legal scholars who have studied the patent prosecution process have pointed to structural problems that encourage the PTO to grant patents of doubtful quality, including high examiner turnover and an incentive system that rewards examiners for allowing but not for rejecting applications (Merges, 1999; Thomas, 2001). As a result, the overwhelming majority of patent applications in the United States, perhaps 85 percent, ultimately result in an issued patent—far more than in Europe and Japan (Quillen, Webster and Eichman, 2003; NAS, 2004).
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).
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 this is not legal advice.
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
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.
I can say that it is not possible for a regular person to do anything without breaking some patent. Mostly obvious and not deserving being granted in a first place. The only reason said person is not always sued is because of being too small of a fish. The minute a couple of bucks is made all of the vultures come down.
The answer, of course, is absolutely nothing at all. If someone wants to force a review, the USPTO actually charges to give a patent a second, more thorough look, effectively double dipping.
It is a profoundly broken system, and people do just push tonnes and tonnes of nonsense patents. This includes the major companies (Apple, Microsoft, Google) who start shoveling patents in the notion that they'll have a warchest of bullshit if push comes to shove.
What is an issue is: 1) the actual claim (last 2 pages) which tries to essentially claim any multi-cpu shared memory computer from the 1960s onwards, and 2) the patent troll trying to claim this is valid
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.
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?
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 increased innovation and competition and the consumer will win.
Software patents should 100% be abolished - for the same reason that mathematical formulas are not patentable.
Is SparkFun considered to be a small business?
Why should the identity of their victims matter? Also, are they?
> Why should the identity of their victims matter? Also, are they?
Because this is a fairly American problem with the American patent system in particular and the ultimate target of pieces like this are American lawmakers and voters.
It's not that only American victims matter, it's that this problem is fairly American in nature and scope.