Who owns patents of DRAM, EDO RAM, SDRAM, DDR RAM, DDR2 RAM?

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

timsullivan2003@yahoo.com (John Corse) wrote:

>Completely wrong,

What's completely wrong, John? Don't you know how to quote and
respond, so that we know what you are talking about? Or is it that,
like a top-poster, you just want to go on a rant without really
addressing the previous points?

 

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 04:37:41 -0500, Tony Hill
<hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote:

>On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:53:01 GMT, "Felger Carbon" <fmsfnf@jfoops.net>
>wrote:
>

<snip>

>>
>>Reading between the lines, I sense that you feel that nobody should
>>have to pay royalties in order to make parts. Am I wrong on this?
>
>Not at all, just that people shouldn't have to pay royalties to a
>company for something that company did little to no work at inventing
>but just happened to have worked the patent system to their advantage.
>I mean honestly, paying x dollars per chip for a friggin' counter?!?
>
>I see no problem at all in Rambus collecting royalties on their RDRAM
>or XDR memory since it's clear that they did real and viable work to
>develop those technologies. However their patents on SDRAM and now
>DDR/DDR2 are much less meaningful.
>
>>An IP company (e.g. Rambus) would be derelict _not_ to take maximum
>>advantage of patent legalities, since that's the only way it can make
>>money, and the company's officers are legally required to work in
>>their stockholders' interest, not in the larger interest of society.
>>Corporations are not charities.
>
>Very true, which is why I see the primary problem here being those
>very patent legalities. There's no way that Rambus should have been
>able to get patents on most of what they were given patents to. The
>technology was very obvious and in widespread use when most of these
>patents were granted, it's only due to the web of divisions,
>continuations, extensions and abandonment's that they were able to get
>those patents.
>

It's fairly easy for technical people to imagine that the lawyers
don't really grasp the technical issues at stake, and the technical
people are probably right most of the time.

Have you thought about it the other way around, though? That is to
say, you could go on and on about the technical issues, but how well
do you think you really understand the legal issues?

The one patent case I followed through in detail was was heard en banc
by the federal circuit court of appeals (the full appellate court
heard the case, not just a three-judge panel). The issues at stake
remind me somewhat of the Rambus case: the patent holder filed a
patent on a process for which there was significant and obvious prior
art. The patent claimant made a distinction in the patent that was
recognized and upheld by the appellate court.

Not only that, but the patent claimant made broad claims that allowed
them to assert that a process that bore no resemblance to there patent
was infringing by the principal of equivalence. Those broad claims
were upheld as well. The lawyers got rich.

I remember the arguments made repeatedly by those involved with the
defense: there was prior art, and, in any case, their process was
different. It all sounded right to an engineer. Not to the lawyers,
though.

Everyday notions of reasonableness just don't cut it in the IP
business. Either you manage to stake your claim and successfully
defend it, or you don't.

As to this principal of equivalence, which is an issue in the Rambus
case, what is it that allows one drug company to put a different side
chain on the same aromatic ring and patent a new drug? I have no
idea, and I'm really clear that I don't understand patent law.

RM

 

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

Your poor reading comprehension is almost as bad as your ignorance of
the facts of this case. Clearly my post relates to the facts of the
case and says nothing about equitable estoppel.

 

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 13:00:59 -0500, Robert Myers <rmyers1400@comcast.net>
wrote:

>On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 04:37:41 -0500, Tony Hill
><hilla_nospam_20@yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:53:01 GMT, "Felger Carbon" <fmsfnf@jfoops.net>
>>wrote:
>>
>
><snip>
>
>>>
>>>Reading between the lines, I sense that you feel that nobody should
>>>have to pay royalties in order to make parts. Am I wrong on this?
>>
>>Not at all, just that people shouldn't have to pay royalties to a
>>company for something that company did little to no work at inventing
>>but just happened to have worked the patent system to their advantage.
>>I mean honestly, paying x dollars per chip for a friggin' counter?!?
>>
>>I see no problem at all in Rambus collecting royalties on their RDRAM
>>or XDR memory since it's clear that they did real and viable work to
>>develop those technologies. However their patents on SDRAM and now
>>DDR/DDR2 are much less meaningful.
>>
>>>An IP company (e.g. Rambus) would be derelict _not_ to take maximum
>>>advantage of patent legalities, since that's the only way it can make
>>>money, and the company's officers are legally required to work in
>>>their stockholders' interest, not in the larger interest of society.
>>>Corporations are not charities.
>>
>>Very true, which is why I see the primary problem here being those
>>very patent legalities. There's no way that Rambus should have been
>>able to get patents on most of what they were given patents to. The
>>technology was very obvious and in widespread use when most of these
>>patents were granted, it's only due to the web of divisions,
>>continuations, extensions and abandonment's that they were able to get
>>those patents.
>>
>
>It's fairly easy for technical people to imagine that the lawyers
>don't really grasp the technical issues at stake, and the technical
>people are probably right most of the time.
>
>Have you thought about it the other way around, though? That is to
>say, you could go on and on about the technical issues, but how well
>do you think you really understand the legal issues?
>
>The one patent case I followed through in detail was was heard en banc
>by the federal circuit court of appeals (the full appellate court
>heard the case, not just a three-judge panel). The issues at stake
>remind me somewhat of the Rambus case: the patent holder filed a
>patent on a process for which there was significant and obvious prior
>art. The patent claimant made a distinction in the patent that was
>recognized and upheld by the appellate court.
>
>Not only that, but the patent claimant made broad claims that allowed
>them to assert that a process that bore no resemblance to there patent
>was infringing by the principal of equivalence. Those broad claims
>were upheld as well. The lawyers got rich.

We're not assuming in our disgust for RMBS that lawyers are not licensed
racketeers. This glaring example might be a good starting point for
fixing that system -- it would appear to be fixable, or am I being naive?
-- before they own us all.

>I remember the arguments made repeatedly by those involved with the
>defense: there was prior art, and, in any case, their process was
>different. It all sounded right to an engineer. Not to the lawyers,
>though.
>
>Everyday notions of reasonableness just don't cut it in the IP
>business. Either you manage to stake your claim and successfully
>defend it, or you don't.
>
>As to this principal of equivalence, which is an issue in the Rambus
>case, what is it that allows one drug company to put a different side
>chain on the same aromatic ring and patent a new drug? I have no
>idea, and I'm really clear that I don't understand patent law.

Well the medical industry is pretty much a buncha licensed drug dealers
but....

It's not so much the chemical compound they have a patent on - some of
them, or very close analogues, are found in nature after all. The
synthesis of most modern drugs involves a complex series of reaction steps
-- twenty steps is not unusual -- each of which could be "original" and can
require considerable tweaking to get useful yield.

On that subject, the Lipitor case is an example of one where things might
get "fixed": http://www.pubpat.org/index.html so things are not completely
hopeless. Slightly more on topic, the same guys got the M$ FAT patents
thrown out... is there a glimmer of hope here?

You might also wonder how California managed to pass "emissions
regulations" which basically imposed a recipe for gasoline on the petroleum
business and a certain California-based petroleum company just somehow came
up with patented process designs for making the ingredients which satisfied
the regulations.<shrug>

--
Rgds, George Macdonald

 

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:37:32 -0500, George Macdonald
<fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:

>On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 13:00:59 -0500, Robert Myers <rmyers1400@comcast.net>
>wrote:
>

<snip>

>>
>>The one patent case I followed through in detail was was heard en banc
>>by the federal circuit court of appeals (the full appellate court
>>heard the case, not just a three-judge panel). The issues at stake
>>remind me somewhat of the Rambus case: the patent holder filed a
>>patent on a process for which there was significant and obvious prior
>>art. The patent claimant made a distinction in the patent that was
>>recognized and upheld by the appellate court.
>>
>>Not only that, but the patent claimant made broad claims that allowed
>>them to assert that a process that bore no resemblance to there patent
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Grrrrrrr.....their
>>was infringing by the principal of equivalence. Those broad claims
>>were upheld as well. The lawyers got rich.
>
>We're not assuming in our disgust for RMBS that lawyers are not licensed
>racketeers. This glaring example might be a good starting point for
>fixing that system -- it would appear to be fixable, or am I being naive?
>-- before they own us all.
>

That case is almost ten years dead now. Unless the malpractice claim
they were going to file against their *first* set of patent lawyers
(one of the most presitigious patent law firms in the US) is still
going.

<snip>

>>
>>As to this principal of equivalence, which is an issue in the Rambus
>>case, what is it that allows one drug company to put a different side
>>chain on the same aromatic ring and patent a new drug? I have no
>>idea, and I'm really clear that I don't understand patent law.
>
>Well the medical industry is pretty much a buncha licensed drug dealers
>but....
>
>It's not so much the chemical compound they have a patent on - some of
>them, or very close analogues, are found in nature after all. The
>synthesis of most modern drugs involves a complex series of reaction steps
>-- twenty steps is not unusual -- each of which could be "original" and can
>require considerable tweaking to get useful yield.
>
>On that subject, the Lipitor case is an example of one where things might
>get "fixed": http://www.pubpat.org/index.html so things are not completely
>hopeless. Slightly more on topic, the same guys got the M$ FAT patents
>thrown out... is there a glimmer of hope here?
>

If you had a look at a real estate map of Boston and Cambridge and had
any interest in the health of the science and technology sector, you
might have mixed feelings about drug patents, or at least you might
understand why predatory patents are tolerated. Predatory patents =
capital formation.

There is a real estate boom going on here. The money is coming from
outrageous prices for drugs, medical devices, and medical
procedures...and there is real concern in the biotech sector that the
flow of capital will dry up unless investors start seeing better
returns. I don't have any clever answers.

>You might also wonder how California managed to pass "emissions
>regulations" which basically imposed a recipe for gasoline on the petroleum
>business and a certain California-based petroleum company just somehow came
>up with patented process designs for making the ingredients which satisfied
>the regulations.<shrug>

It's called "campaign contributions," otherwise known as bribes.

RM

 

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

timsullivan2003@yahoo.com wrote:
> Basically what Rambus was accused of is fraud by omission/
> silence, in that members of JEDEC claimed Rambus was required
> to disclose by virtue of just being a member of JEDEC.

Please look up the doctrine of equitable estoppel. It most
certainly does include fraud by silence. Also note it is
a defense, and higher burdens are required to win damages.

-- Robert

 

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 10:41:58 -0500, Keith R. Williams <krw@att.bizzzz>
wrote:

>The pencil existed and the eraser existed. The function of either
>didn't change when they were combined into one unit, thus combining
>them was deemed to be "obvious to one skilled in the art" and thus not
>patentable.

If it was obvious to one skilled in the art, then why didn't anybody
make them before that? It would seem to me that if somebody combined
two existing items into a new item that is an improvement on the
older, then it should be patentable if nobody else did it.

>The phrase is "obvious to one skilled in the art". It is not
>"obvious" if one sees it and then says "man that's so obvious, I wish
>I'd thought of it". "Obvious" has a legal definition and isn't at all
>straight-forward. ...which is only part of the problem.

So how is this "obvious" defined? After all, I'm sure that if I
spotted something with big money making potential, say a new way of
networking, and patents it.

But, due to popular preconceptions and such, none of the big corps
ever thought in that direction so none of them ever designed or made
anything of that sort. Yet I'm pretty sure they are not going to tell
the patent judge "Yeah, it's so obvious we wished we thought of it."

They are all likely to say things to the effect of "Yeah, it's an
obvious thing because we already have A, B and C which is what this
new E evolved from even though all along we only thought of D." before
quickly running off to produce commercial products based on this
"obvious" innovation.

After all, it's always easier to cook up a story to explain the past.

Hence I believe the only objective test of "obviousness" should be in
the doing. Only if at least a few (if only 2 people in the world can
think of it, it ain't obvious ) people skilled in the art
independently produced/designed it before, then it would be obvious.
Otherwise, no.

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 18:31:44 -0500, Robert Myers <rmyers1400@comcast.net>
wrote:

>On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 16:37:32 -0500, George Macdonald
><fammacd=!SPAM^nothanks@tellurian.com> wrote:

>>It's not so much the chemical compound they have a patent on - some of
>>them, or very close analogues, are found in nature after all. The
>>synthesis of most modern drugs involves a complex series of reaction steps
>>-- twenty steps is not unusual -- each of which could be "original" and can
>>require considerable tweaking to get useful yield.
>>
>>On that subject, the Lipitor case is an example of one where things might
>>get "fixed": http://www.pubpat.org/index.html so things are not completely
>>hopeless. Slightly more on topic, the same guys got the M$ FAT patents
>>thrown out... is there a glimmer of hope here?
>>
>
>If you had a look at a real estate map of Boston and Cambridge and had
>any interest in the health of the science and technology sector, you
>might have mixed feelings about drug patents, or at least you might
>understand why predatory patents are tolerated. Predatory patents =
>capital formation.

Oh I hope I didn't give the impression I was defending them as a group -
the abuses are in the majority - I was just giving an example of what might
be a reasonable err, excuse, for the quasi-honest ones.

>There is a real estate boom going on here. The money is coming from
>outrageous prices for drugs, medical devices, and medical
>procedures...and there is real concern in the biotech sector that the
>flow of capital will dry up unless investors start seeing better
>returns. I don't have any clever answers.

And of course the insurance companies just cough up the dough because their
business is measured by how much money passes through their hands. Doesn't
anybody realize that the well *will* run dry?

--
Rgds, George Macdonald

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Tue, 01 Feb 2005 13:00:59 -0500, Robert Myers
<rmyers1400@comcast.net> wrote:

>It's fairly easy for technical people to imagine that the lawyers
>don't really grasp the technical issues at stake, and the technical
>people are probably right most of the time.
>
>Have you thought about it the other way around, though? That is to
>say, you could go on and on about the technical issues, but how well
>do you think you really understand the legal issues?
>
>The one patent case I followed through in detail was was heard en banc
>by the federal circuit court of appeals (the full appellate court
>heard the case, not just a three-judge panel). The issues at stake
>remind me somewhat of the Rambus case: the patent holder filed a
>patent on a process for which there was significant and obvious prior
>art. The patent claimant made a distinction in the patent that was
>recognized and upheld by the appellate court.
>
>Not only that, but the patent claimant made broad claims that allowed
>them to assert that a process that bore no resemblance to there patent
>was infringing by the principal of equivalence. Those broad claims
>were upheld as well. The lawyers got rich.
>
>I remember the arguments made repeatedly by those involved with the
>defense: there was prior art, and, in any case, their process was
>different. It all sounded right to an engineer. Not to the lawyers,
>though.

Perhaps I am approaching this with the bias of an engineer, but really
I just think the above example proves the problem.

The whole idea of the law is to determine right from wrong. But if,
as seems to be the case above, everyone who understands the issues
involved here says that one side is right but the law finds them wrong
and the other side right, then to me that suggests that the law is
broken. Just because one lawyer can prove to another lawyer that a
their client is correct based on a broken law, that doesn't mean that
the law isn't broken.

>Everyday notions of reasonableness just don't cut it in the IP
>business. Either you manage to stake your claim and successfully
>defend it, or you don't.

This is my very problem here, the fact that a reasonable concept of
right vs. wrong doesn't cut it, it's all a matter of who is able to
work the system to their own ends.

>As to this principal of equivalence, which is an issue in the Rambus
>case, what is it that allows one drug company to put a different side
>chain on the same aromatic ring and patent a new drug? I have no
>idea, and I'm really clear that I don't understand patent law.

The drug industry is another one that is likely to end up exploding
with all sorts of questionable patent lawsuits. Through it all, you
and I are going to end up footing the bill to make a bunch of lawyers
richer because of it.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

 

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

> There was also the issue of Rambus's membership in an industrial
> consortium called JEDEC which set all of the standards for everything

> from EDO RAM to the current DDR2. One of the requirements of JEDEC
> membership is that if you want to sit in on all of the secret
meetings
> of the standards body, you have to reveal all of your own patents,
and
> tell your co-members whether any of the work that the industry group
is
> working on infringe on any of your own patents and warn them about
it.

JEDEC meetings were not "secret" and indeed it would be against
anti-trust law if a standards body tried to have "secret" meetings. The
minutes of JEDEC meetings are publicly available, as obviously are the
standards produced from JEDEC.

> Rambus never revealed whether any of the work JEDEC was working on
had
> any infringement potential on their patents. It's been generally
> speculated that the reason Rambus kept quiet during JEDEC meetings
was
> because they did want to charge royalties on the standards that
> eventually came out, so it could make income from it.
>

And you think the DRAM makers thought that Rambus, an IP only company,
would not try and charge for their IP? Surely even you are not that
gullible even though some DRAM makers are claiming they were so
ignorant.

> An even less flattering speculation was that Rambus kept quiet
because
> it really had no patents that infringed anything JEDEC was working
on,
> but it wanted to sit in on the meetings anyways, so that it could
modify
> its very general patents to include material that was being worked on

> inside JEDEC secretly.
>
> Yousuf Khan

Since your premise that JEDEC meetings were "secret" is completely
wrong, it is not hard to see how you reach such a ridiculous
conclusion. Rambus could have easily modified it's patents to cover the
SDRAM and DDR standards even if it were not a member of JEDEC as the
minutes of the meetings and the standards are public information. Note
that Rambus is now sueing DRAM makers for DDR2 a standard that was set
long after Rambus left JEDEC.

 

[keith]

Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

On Wed, 02 Feb 2005 06:45:55 +0000, The little lost angel wrote:

> On Mon, 31 Jan 2005 10:41:58 -0500, Keith R. Williams <krw@att.bizzzz>
> wrote:
>
>>The pencil existed and the eraser existed. The function of either
>>didn't change when they were combined into one unit, thus combining
>>them was deemed to be "obvious to one skilled in the art" and thus not
>>patentable.
>
> If it was obvious to one skilled in the art, then why didn't anybody
> make them before that?

That is indeed the crux of the "obvious" question. The fact is that
combining this "known art" didn't add any new function. Thus it was
deemed to be not worth a government granted monopoly.

> It would seem to me that if somebody combined
> two existing items into a new item that is an improvement on the older,
> then it should be patentable if nobody else did it.

If it does something new, perhaps. In this case it was decided that the
eraser+pencil was just that. No new function = no innovation, thus no
patent.

>>The phrase is "obvious to one skilled in the art". It is not "obvious"
>>if one sees it and then says "man that's so obvious, I wish I'd thought
>>of it". "Obvious" has a legal definition and isn't at all
>>straight-forward. ...which is only part of the problem.
>
> So how is this "obvious" defined? After all, I'm sure that if I spotted
> something with big money making potential, say a new way of networking,
> and patents it.

Is it novel? That's the *big* issue. If it's not, then you haven't a
chance. If it is...

> But, due to popular preconceptions and such, none of the big corps ever
> thought in that direction so none of them ever designed or made anything
> of that sort. Yet I'm pretty sure they are not going to tell the patent
> judge "Yeah, it's so obvious we wished we thought of it."

That's a flaw in the system. Though you can likely get a patent, you may
play hell enforcing it. OTOH, a Mr. Gould invented this little widget
called a LASER. His invention was pretty much ignored for decades until
the courts finally awarded it to him. Those that didn't buy a license
before (to help pay for his patent defense) were *screwed*. It's an
interesting case!

> They are all likely to say things to the effect of "Yeah, it's an
> obvious thing because we already have A, B and C which is what this new
> E evolved from even though all along we only thought of D." before
> quickly running off to produce commercial products based on this
> "obvious" innovation.

That will certainly be their defense. OTOH, a jury trial often goes to
the little guy. All he has to do is show that the big baddie is picking
on him "unfairly".

> After all, it's always easier to cook up a story to explain the past.

It seems you're getting into the Rambus way of thinking!

> Hence I believe the only objective test of "obviousness" should be in
> the doing. Only if at least a few (if only 2 people in the world can
> think of it, it ain't obvious ) people skilled in the art
> independently produced/designed it before, then it would be obvious.
> Otherwise, no.

Often the invention doesn't come until the need presents itself. Does
that mean the one who thinks up a solution to "world peace" cannot be
rewarded? "Aw, *hell*, all we have to do is stop shooting and we'll all
live hapily ever after!" Pretty obvious, eh?

--
Keith

 

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On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 21:27:32 -0500, keith <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:

>> If it was obvious to one skilled in the art, then why didn't anybody
>> make them before that?
>
>That is indeed the crux of the "obvious" question. The fact is that
>combining this "known art" didn't add any new function. Thus it was
>deemed to be not worth a government granted monopoly.

Isn't that a bit silly? Why should Cell be patentable then? Prcessors
already exist, vector/scalar processors already exist, multi-core
processor already exist, parallel computing already exists,
distributed computing already exists, wireless networks already exist.
It's basically integrating existing technology in a new way, is it
not?


>If it does something new, perhaps. In this case it was decided that the
>eraser+pencil was just that. No new function = no innovation, thus no
>patent.

Ditto for Cell so why the patent? We could take a couple of multi-core
processors link them to a cople of vector cpu on a board with built-in
wireless links and use a scalable version of linux to achieve the same
functions, no?

>Is it novel? That's the *big* issue. If it's not, then you haven't a
>chance. If it is...

Again what defines novel? If nobody did it before, isn't it then new
and original?

>That will certainly be their defense. OTOH, a jury trial often goes to
>the little guy. All he has to do is show that the big baddie is picking
>on him "unfairly".

Hmm... sounds like if I ever have to file a patent, I should do it in
the US. We don't have juries here and I wouldn't trust my legal system
against big corps with money.

>> After all, it's always easier to cook up a story to explain the past.
>It seems you're getting into the Rambus way of thinking!

I might not agree with what they did, but I'm not blind to how it's
done and how this tactic can be used against me if I ever file a
patent PPpp

>Often the invention doesn't come until the need presents itself. Does
>that mean the one who thinks up a solution to "world peace" cannot be
>rewarded? "Aw, *hell*, all we have to do is stop shooting and we'll all
>live hapily ever after!" Pretty obvious, eh?

But nobody has ever done it before which is my point. It might be
obvious for some reason, but if nobody has done it, it means that
there's a crucial innovative step that's not that obvious after all.
It is like we have A and everybody knows to get to D, we have to do C,
but nobody's figured out how to do B yet. If he can do it, I say give
him the patent and Nobel prize or otherwise the Oscar

Actually, I do have Step B for world peace. Except once Step B is
executed, there won't be anybody left to award the patent

--
L.Angel: I'm looking for web design work.
If you need basic to med complexity webpages at affordable rates, email me
Standard HTML, SHTML, MySQL + PHP or ASP, Javascript.
If you really want, FrontPage & DreamWeaver too.
But keep in mind you pay extra bandwidth for their bloated code

 

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Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips (More info?)

In article <420aef36.313521125@news.singnet.com.sg>, a?n?g?e?
l@lovergirl.lrigrevol.moc.com says...
> On Mon, 07 Feb 2005 21:27:32 -0500, keith <krw@att.bizzzz> wrote:
>
> >> If it was obvious to one skilled in the art, then why didn't anybody
> >> make them before that?
> >
> >That is indeed the crux of the "obvious" question. The fact is that
> >combining this "known art" didn't add any new function. Thus it was
> >deemed to be not worth a government granted monopoly.
>
> Isn't that a bit silly? Why should Cell be patentable then? Prcessors
> already exist, vector/scalar processors already exist, multi-core
> processor already exist, parallel computing already exists,
> distributed computing already exists, wireless networks already exist.
> It's basically integrating existing technology in a new way, is it
> not?

You have to look at what is being taught and what is claimed. If there
is no new teaching, there is no reason to grant the patent monopoly. As
yourself what in cell is being patented? Certainly not the fact that
one can glue co-processors together. There are likely a thousand
patents in there, but that ain't one (or shouldn't be, dunno I haven't
read the cell patents).

> >If it does something new, perhaps. In this case it was decided that the
> >eraser+pencil was just that. No new function = no innovation, thus no
> >patent.
>
> Ditto for Cell so why the patent? We could take a couple of multi-core
> processors link them to a cople of vector cpu on a board with built-in
> wireless links and use a scalable version of linux to achieve the same
> functions, no?

Have you read the patents? Have a list that I can comment on?

> >Is it novel? That's the *big* issue. If it's not, then you haven't a
> >chance. If it is...
>
> Again what defines novel? If nobody did it before, isn't it then new
> and original?

It's novel if no one has done it before. Novelty is a requirement for
a patent, but it's certainly not the only one.

> >That will certainly be their defense. OTOH, a jury trial often goes to
> >the little guy. All he has to do is show that the big baddie is picking
> >on him "unfairly".
>
> Hmm... sounds like if I ever have to file a patent, I should do it in
> the US. We don't have juries here and I wouldn't trust my legal system
> against big corps with money.

The patent would "only" be valid in the US then. ;-) It's very easy
for an individual to sue a "big-bad" corporation here.

> >> After all, it's always easier to cook up a story to explain the past.
> >It seems you're getting into the Rambus way of thinking!
>
> I might not agree with what they did, but I'm not blind to how it's
> done and how this tactic can be used against me if I ever file a
> patent PPpp

Sure. No one said the process isn't broken. I'm rather skeptical that
the proposed "cures" I see here wouldn't be worse than the disease.

> >Often the invention doesn't come until the need presents itself. Does
> >that mean the one who thinks up a solution to "world peace" cannot be
> >rewarded? "Aw, *hell*, all we have to do is stop shooting and we'll all
> >live hapily ever after!" Pretty obvious, eh?
>
> But nobody has ever done it before which is my point. It might be
> obvious for some reason, but if nobody has done it, it means that
> there's a crucial innovative step that's not that obvious after all.
> It is like we have A and everybody knows to get to D, we have to do C,
> but nobody's figured out how to do B yet. If he can do it, I say give
> him the patent and Nobel prize or otherwise the Oscar

Sure. He's awarded a patent for doing B, but not D. If someone else
figures out a way to do B' he can also do D because he's not infringing
on the B patent.
>
> Actually, I do have Step B for world peace. Except once Step B is
> executed, there won't be anybody left to award the patent

MAD averted WW-III, so there's prior art for your invention. ;-)

--
Keith