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Will the Patent Fun EVER END?!!!

THE FUN JUST KEEPS ON KEEPIN' ON!!!

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Intel accuser alleges 150 others violate chip patent
By Tony Smith
Published Monday 26th April 2004 09:06 GMT

Patriot Scientific, the technology company sueing Intel and others for alleged patent infringement, has told more than 150 other firms that it will sue them too - unless if they come to a suitable arrangement with it.

Patriot's action takes in many of the biggest names in the Wintel PC world. In addition to Intel, the company has already begun legal proceedings against Japanese vendors Sony, Fujitsu, Toshiba, NEC and Matsushita. Those suits were filed in January.


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From the 'NY Times'...

A chip design company that was once one of Silicon Valley's highfliers filed a patent infringement suit Friday against Intel and Dell, contending the companies have copied its technology for multimedia computing. The lawsuit was filed in Federal District Court in Marshall, Texas, by MicroUnity Systems Engineering, which was founded in 1988 by John Moussouris, a physicist and computer designer.

Intel and Dell executives declined to comment. Several industry executives, however, said that the lawsuit could be troubling for the two companies.

The lawsuit is being brought by the same legal team that sued Intel on behalf of Intergraph, a maker of microprocessors in Huntsville, Ala. Intel has so far paid Intergraph $150 Million in that lawsuit.


From another article...


MicroUnity Systems Engineering Friday said it has filed its complaint in the United States District Court in Marshall, Texas. The lawsuit alleges that certain Dell computers and Intel's Pentium 3 and Pentium 4 chips infringe on seven of MicroUnity's patents, filed as early as 1995. Four of the patents share a common description, and two were filed only a few years ago. MicroUnity did not specify damages in its filing.

The patents in question cover aspects of multimedia processing and computer architecture such as SSE (Streaming SIMD Extension) and SSE2 multimedia extensions, as well as the HT (Hyper-Threading) features being offered in Dell's and Intel's newest products.


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Office 2003 End Users at Risk of Lawsuit from Developer


http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/10/27/1067213195363.html

Developer claims rights breach in Office 2003

October 28, 2003


Microsoft Australia's director of corporate and legal affairs, Chris Woodforde, said the software company was "very confident" no claim would succeed against Microsoft or its customers. He said that if Microsoft needed technology from a developer, they would buy it and not risk infringement.

"Eric's a very respected developer and we've taken what he has to say very seriously," Woodforde said.



Wilson said he found an infringement when he received the trial version, Beta 2, of the Office 2003 software, which Microsoft distributed to 500,000 people.

Wilson told Microsoft Australia that its software breached three patents pending in the areas of "screen-paginated document display, electronic publishing and search result usage technology" but said he had not had a response from the company.

Wilson said: "For now, all we can say is end-users should be kept informed, before they buy, about the potential risks of one day being found to have infringed.

"Even though we have a clear report from the international examiner, the potential for enforcement is only possible if and when applications are finally granted."

Possible remedies under civil law include retrospective awarding of royalties, the decommissioning of Microsoft customers' systems, and damages.

"When software makers don't act appropriately, aggrieved inventors are being squeezed to go down the line for compensation to the unauthorised end-user beneficiaries of their work," Wilson said.


From another article...


In several similar statements, Microsoft reportedly denies any risk of future Office 2003 end-user liability, which Mr. Wilson says might still potentially arise from various patents-pending. The software giant was made aware of these way back in December 2001.

The newspapers quote Microsoft referring to Mr. Wilson as a ?very respected developer?, and claims to have ?taken what he has to say very seriously?. But in fact, the company decided not to consider one of the unpublished patent applications at all, until it ?matures? ? possibly months or years off. And on several occasions, Microsoft refused to acknowledge further correspondence, which cited other potential end-user risks concerning additional patents-pending:

?After turning a blind eye, how can Microsoft honestly give such sweeping assurances to the market?? Mr. Wilson asks.? We believe proper due diligence has not been performed by Microsoft in time to ensure Office 2003 has no conflicts with patents-pending if they are granted. So surely they must fully disclose to customers any potential risk this might create, such as the licence being amended with extra obligations later, or the price on their box being appended with additional future royalties??


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OLD BUT INTERESTING DEPT.

From http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Links/prep.ai.mit.edu/issues.article

For Immediate Release 12/14/94

By David A. Burton
President
Burton Systems Software
PO Box 4157, Cary, NC 27519-4157
Tel: 919-481-0098 or 919-233-8128
Fax: 919-233-0716
email: dburton@salzo.cary.nc.us


SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS WANT CHANGES IN PATENT, COPYRIGHT LAW

RALEIGH - Burton Systems Software released the results of a poll of computer programmers, which reveals widespread dissatisfaction with the current state of U.S. patent and copyright law.

Burton surveyed professional software developers who attended the Software Development '94 East trade show, in Washington, D.C., October 4-6th. Visitors to Burton's booth were asked about two controversial areas of intellectual property law: patents on computer software, and copyrights on the "look and feel" of software user interfaces.

The results were startling. By lopsided margins ranging from over 2:1 to more than 10:1, the software developers said that both software patents and look-and-feel copyrights impede software development and should be abolished.

"The U.S. Constitution authorizes patents and copyrights to promote the progress of science and the useful arts," said Dave Burton, President of Burton Systems Software. "Yet the people responsible for that progress say that both software patents and look-and-feel copyrights do just the opposite. That's quite an indictment of the current law."

By 79.6% to 8.2%, the computer programmers said that granting patents on computer software impedes, rather than promotes, software development (the remaining 12.2% were undecided). By 59.2% to 26.5%, most went even further, saying that software patents should be abolished outright. (Current U.S. law allows the patenting of computer software algorithms, but many other nations do not recognize such patents.)

The programmers are even more strongly opposed to copyrights on the "look and feel" of software user interfaces. By 85.7% to 8.2%, they think that such copyrights impede, rather than promote, software development. By 77.6% to 14.3%, they want to abolish such copyrights.

Patents and copyrights grant inventors and authors legal monopolies, providing increased financial profits as a reward - and incentive - for advancing "the useful arts." The results of this survey are especially striking because it is the developers of new technology, the very people that Burton polled, whose financial interests are supposed to be protected by patents and copyrights.

Most software developers do not oppose all software copyrights. There is broad support for basic copyright protection of computer programs, which prohibits directly copying computer programs without the author's permission. Nearly all commercial software is copyrighted, and most programmers agree that such protection is necessary in order for software development to be profitable.

However, software patents and look-and-feel copyrights go well beyond this, to prohibit other programmers from independently writing even programs that are similar to the protected program. Such constraints are strongly resented by many in the software development community, who long for the "good old days" when they were free to write whatever programs they wanted, without fear of lawsuits.

In recent years, a wave of such lawsuits has shaken the industry, involving companies like IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Lotus, Borland, and many others.

"Software patents and look-and-feel copyrights make lawsuits inevitable," said Burton, "because developers can never be sure just what they may legally write. Until the government started issuing software patents and look-and-feel copyrights, we operated under a very simple rule: if you wrote it, it was yours. But now it takes a lawsuit to answer the question of who owns your computer program."

Posted by: Yen_z   Posted on: 02/15/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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