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SparkFun Hooks a Patent Troll

803 points by mkeeter 5y ago

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
I wonder if one could make trolling patent trolls self-sustaining. For example, let’s say you get hit with a demand letter. I review it and agree to finance your case. Using my resources, I prepare to invalidate the troll’s patents unless they settle for some amount less than their expected lifetime value from said patents. This gets split between you and me (after litigation costs), with maybe some of my share 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.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  The lifetime value of having a patent is much higher than the lifetime value of any specific patent. That's because the scam works whether the patent is valuable or not. Invalidating a patent costs them the time it takes to get a new one.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Invalidating a patent costs them the time it takes to get a new one 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.
- bob33212 5y ago
  I think you could scare off a good number of these trolls by saying. "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."
  - wiredfool 5y ago
    """Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.""" https://www.audioholics.com/news/blue-jeans-strikes-back https://www.audioholics.com/news/blue-jeans-strikes-back
- URSpider94 5y ago
  In that case, the troll can almost always just drop the suit and then you have no claim against them.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > the troll can almost always just drop the suit and then you have no claim against them I do not believe that would suspend an inter partes review [1]. Of course, if this method of relief is not available the above wouldn't work. [1] https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/trials/inter-partes-review https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/trials/inter-partes-revie...
- simiones 5y ago
  This only works if the patent troll believes the patent can be invalidated. This is rather hard for many patents - a lot of the time patent trolls own legitimate patents, they just try to apply them over-broadly. You would defeat them in court, but would not automatically invalidate their patent - you may only be able to show that their claims do not cover your work.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
> Patent trolls are Americans that are destroying American manufacturing and small business Why should the identity of their victims matter? Also, are they?
- dbt00 5y ago
  > > Patent trolls are Americans that are destroying American manufacturing and small business > 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.
  - Covzire 5y ago
    Democrats have a chance at overhauling the Patent system tomorrow, the pathetic nature of these thieves is hated across the entire political spectrum and it would pass with an overwhelming support if voted on by itself.
desine 5y ago
Interesting read. Much more in-depth bullshittery than the usual patent troll. I love sparkfun, I've spent far too much money there building small trinkets, but I like supporting a local independent shop, and getting quality builds, rather than waiting and risking lower quality direct from Shenzen. I'm almost glad they got hit by the troll, because they're one of the companies with the wherewithal and life to blow them out of the water.
- yborg 5y ago
  Once the law firm realizes that their potential score here is at best in the low hundreds of dollars, they will undoubtedly never follow up. It's like any spam, the few victims they land on will pay for dozens of pointless filings.
fossuser 5y ago
I wonder if it's possible to make some sort of patent troll insurance company. 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.
- qbasic_forever 5y ago
  Hold on, I'm going to go patent this idea. :)
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  1. This is called a patent pool. It's very common. 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.
  - staticautomatic 5y ago
    You can preemptively sue them, albeit not for infringing on your IP. It’s called declaratory relief.
    - _jal 5y ago
      You can only try that if you know they exist.
      - staticautomatic 5y ago
        Sure, but they have to come up for air sooner or later.
    - ineedasername 5y ago
      Unfortunately it would basically be an ongoing DDoS on the court system to try to get declaratory relief for existing garbage patents and the never ending stream if them created every day.
ohazi 5y ago
> > The cost is further reduced by employing only static or dynamic ram as a means for holding the state of the system. [...] > Dynamic ram? Can I poke fun at them for not knowing what RAM is? Yes I can. > The above paragraph succinctly describes malloc(), which is perhaps one of the most fundamental advancements in modern computing. The problem is that Al didn’t invent it. Memory management (the ability to take RAM 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...
- sharemywin 5y ago
  I remember when I toured a research nuclear reactor and I was talking with the nuclear phd student and I said something about an alpha particle and the protons and neutrons. And they were trying to say alpha particles aren't made up of protons and neutrons. Made me realize than that even an expert in the field might not know something that I would have thought was common knowledge.
  - thaumasiotes 5y ago
    There are some pretty obvious followup questions: - What are alpha particles made of? - When an element undergoes alpha decay, its atomic number is reduced by two. Where do the protons go?
av3csr 5y ago
I think MAUs are multiply-accumulate units.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  So, like DSPs have had forever?
  - av3csr 5y ago
    Yep, nothing novel about it
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
postmeta 5y ago
Do the people that work there know it's a troll company I wonder? Maybe like working at an MLM company, you've rationalized it in your own mind as protecting inventors and creative people! https://www.linkedin.com/company/ip-edge-llc https://www.linkedin.com/company/ip-edge-llc
- unclekev 5y ago
  From their LinkedIn > 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.
W-Stool 5y ago
Did I miss in the article what the author plans to do about this? It is one thing to poke fun at patent trolls, but when you are the target of the troll legally you need to do something. What's their response going to be?
- mrandish 5y ago
  Until and unless you've actually been sued in a relevant court, you don't need to do anything (and frankly probably shouldn't, it's like replying to spam). It appears Spark Fun has actually been sued in this instance, which is a slightly more aggressive form of trolling. IANAL but I am a very experienced serial entrepreneur (and after a few decades you've pretty much seen all the relevant flavors of this shit). Spark Fun probably didn't say anything about their specific response in this case because the general and prudent advice is to never publicly discuss anything about an active suit without really good reason. 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.
kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
I was under the impression that modern patents had to have a clear list of claims but this one has nothing but technobabble and "1 Claim, 64 Drawing Sheets". How was this approved?
- mikedilger 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure the patent office has been doing less and less actual work, approving more and more patents, and figuring that the courts can sort it out.
- defaultname 5y ago
  What is the penalty for the USPTO if they grant patents that shouldn't have been granted? 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.
  - MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
    I could see why seeing as they don't want to screw around with patent trolls either.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  It was approved in 2001. They weren't as tight on this kind of nonsense back then.
- Taniwha 5y ago
  As I've mentioned elsewhere here I suspect that most of this patent was originally written at least in part to establish prior-art and as a result to avoid future patent claims - it's some guy describing his quite valid new architecture - don't tear him down for that. 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
BeetleB 5y ago
BTW, for anyone who hasn't heard it, the This American Life episode linked to is absolutely worth listening to (or just read the transcript). They should link to the update to that story: Transcript: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/transcript Audio: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/when-patents-attack-part-two 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.
- akudha 5y ago
  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??!!
  - compiler-guy 5y ago
    It’s a term you agree to when you sign the settlement to get them to go away the first time. And one of the reasons that you shouldn’t give in the first time either. It makes sense to sign it because they have you over a barrel.
Taniwha 5y ago
OK - so I vaguely skipped through the patent looking for claims - mostly it's a description of some guys possibly novel media processor architecture, remember the description is not the patent, the claims are. I could only find a short claims section at the end (1.5 pages out of 56). 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
- leeter 5y ago
  nVidia and Sony actually cited this patent I'd think you'd need to look further back. I'd guess Cray? This seems like something they would have patented very early on with the Cray1.
  - Taniwha 5y ago
    Oh there's lots of prior-art way before Crays (B5500, CDC6700 - mid sixties for example) 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
AlbertCory 5y ago
Me: software engr, retired; also patent agent who worked in Google Patent Litigation. 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.
- a1371 5y ago
  How did you learn to read the claims?
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    I took the Kayten course [1] to review for the Patent Bar exam. It was three days, and then I spent a couple months reviewing all the old exam questions. [1] https://passingpatentbarwithprg.tumblr.com/post/9992218513/why-im-taking-the-prg-patent-bar-review-course https://passingpatentbarwithprg.tumblr.com/post/9992218513/w...
    - gyc 5y ago
      Note that the patent bar exam tests you on knowledge of rules and regulations of the patent office and of the Patent Cooperation Treaty that many countries have signed on to. So you won't necessarily learn to draft a patent or how to read a patent just by studying materials for the patent bar exam.
      - AlbertCory 5y ago
        True. Like anything, you only learn the REAL practice of it by doing it. In my case, I found a lawyer who made a practice of taking novices & training them (then they'd eventually go on to higher-paying jobs).
- akersten 5y ago
P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul 5y ago
Why not just kill patent trolls? That should solve this problem real quick.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ww520 5y ago
(Note that none of the following is legal advice.) 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. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US6289434B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6289434B1/en
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  Thank you. I'm glad I stopped by HN today. You write well.
- 5y ago
kens 5y ago
I like SparkFun and I don't like patent trolls, but I have to say that SparkFun's mockery of the patent doesn't make sense. It is pretty clear that this patent was written by an engineer describing their actual system in great detail followed by one fairly narrow claim. I've seen many patents that are mostly written by lawyers, and I don't see any influence of lawyers in this patent. 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.
- nixpulvis 5y ago
  I'm no patent lawyer either, but I skimmed over the pages of "434" and it's clearly a bunch of half baked shit. Can you list one novelty in there worthy of patent, even for 1998? 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.
  - colanderman 5y ago
    If you "skimmed pages" you are reading the wrong pages. The only page that matters is the final one, the text after "I Claim". It is very narrow (as the GP points out), and for something that probably actually existed and did something arguably, if minutely, novel. It sounds like a particular implementation technique for some sort of MIMD vector processor. The entire rest of the document is explicatory, and indicates nothing about what was actually patented, just about how the invention is actually used in a system.
AlbertCory 5y ago
The patent is indeed expired (there's a website that will tell you that date, but I forget its URL), but they can still sue for infringement that took place before the expiration date. If the total damages are small (as it appears), then you are probably costing them more than the suit is worth. So I'd expect them to offer to settle for a token amount, to avoid having an official loss on the record. But IANAL and this is not legal advice.
- arvindamirtaa 5y ago
  > offer to settle They can do that. But there isn't much leverage for them if they do that. They'll be giving their hand away and at that point SparkFun has almost no reason to pay a single dollar. Disclaimer : IANAL
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    At Google I went to a talk by a former patent troll about their business models. They buy a patent, and then milk it for what it's still worth. Eventually that goes to zero. If they lose a case publicly, then it's zero immediately. If they settle privately, then the patent is still useful against other victims. The main goal isn't to get $$ from SparkFun -- it's to keep SparkFun from destroying their asset.
    - arvindamirtaa 5y ago
      That's interesting. So, they won't mind if the amount is $10 or even $0 as long as the headlines read "SparkFun and $PatentTroll settle for an undisclosed sum".
civilized 5y ago
Why not just abolish patents? Who or what would oppose this?
- Ballas 5y ago
  Well patents were designed so that you give away your "recipe" in exchange for a limited time monopoly. Clearly that is still a valid use case, but it seems that with patent trolls, patents are getting misused. Software patents should 100% be abolished - for the same reason that mathematical formulas are not patentable.
ajnin 5y ago
Don't patents examiners receive bonuses based on the number of patent applications they process? And isn't accepting a patent basically checking a box, while rejecting one requires an argumented memoir and a lengthy back and forth discussion with the applicant and an appeal process? The patent system is skewed by design towards accepting patents too easily. I don't believe that patents are entirely harmful, but I think they actually hinder progress in 95% of the cases. The system works like this by design, and a lot of interests rely on it. It will be very hard to fix.
- acomjean 5y ago
  I’m not sure about the bonus situation, but the US patent office is self funding (their budget is filing fees), so they’re is the perverse incentive to approve more patents.
- patentatt 5y ago
  They do receive bonuses for doing more work, not necessarily for granting a patent. And you’re dead wrong on the second part, it’s way way way way easier to write a rejection than issue a patent because there’s a good chance the applicant will file a continuation and you’ll get more counts for the same work for an application that you already know well and have done the legwork on. So no, examiners are not incentivized to grant bullshit parents in any way shape or form. Source: former examiner, current patent attorney who works with examiners regularly.
  - rrss 5y ago
    There's sort of a lot of literature that suggests that the USPTO does have a number of incentives to grant invalid patents. Even if they are all mistaken, this suggests to me that the issue is not as clear-cut as you say. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1756-2171.12021 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-the-patent-offices-incentives-to-grant-invalid-patents/download https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/publications/2017-decreasing-... https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Frakes_Michael_IPSC_paper_2014.pdf https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Frakes_Michael_IPSC_paper... https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/0895330054048650 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).
FpUser 5y ago
I do not want to go in the details of particular case. My opinion is that in general the paten system had outlived its purpose since some time and is now nothing but a detriment to society. It only benefits big corps at the expense of everybody else. 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.
keithnz 5y ago
I wonder whether I could get GPT3 to write patents for me so I can be lazy patent troll? hmmm
cycomanic 5y ago
I've said it before, but if you support the patent system, but say patent trolls should be abolished you are essentially saying that patents are only for big corporations to protect their turf from new incomers. 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.
- jdmichal 5y ago
  > 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? 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.
DarkmSparks 5y ago
Austin Meyer of XPlane fame did a good documentary on this a few years back. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johngreathouse/2019/11/08/this-entrepreneur-turned-a-nasty-patent-fight-into-a-compelling-film/amp/ 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.
_pmf_ 5y ago
> So imagine you’re a small business Is SparkFun considered to be a small business?
croo 5y ago
The comments are about the contradictions between the patent and the blog post and the technical discussion are great. I would point out another angle. 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.
AHappyCamper 5y ago
Reading that article makes me not want to open a business in the USA, and I really want to open a business in the USA...
legel 5y ago
I have personally enjoyed community SparkFun events in Boulder, Colorado, which were hosted at a level that was both cool and fun for kids, adults, and experts alike. A really creative and intelligent company. Thanks Nathan for the courage to publish this, and helping other entrepreneurs inventing the future, to not be afraid to call fraud (and prior art) exactly what it is.
cormacrelf 5y ago
Altair Logic actually sued Asus as well in 2019, after the patent had expired in 2018, alleging that Asus sold products infringing exactly this patent 6,289,434 before then. Asus tried, unsuccessfully, to get it dismissed, so we'll see where it goes later. 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-intl 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.)
nkssy 5y ago
It might help if the patent dispute involved or required actual instantiations of the content of the patent. 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?
ncphil 5y ago
The terms for both patent and copyright are way too long. Instead of increasing over the years as we advanced further into the Digital Age, they should have been gradually decreasing. The whole point of the US patent and copyright system is not to "give a special reward" to inventors and authors, but to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts" by building up the public domain commons of inventions and art. The current law, with its lenghthy terms and slipshod processes that invite abuse by trolls and encourage the smothering oppression by monopoly power, is at odds with those original goals. It needs to be torn down completely and rebuilt for this not-so-new century.
- theli0nheart 5y ago
  > The whole point of the US patent and copyright system is not to "give a special reward" to inventors and authors, but to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts" by building up the public domain commons of inventions and art. First, citation needed. Second, these two things are not at odds. People require incentives. If you want people to submit their inventions to the public domain, you do need to provide them with economic incentives for it. Otherwise, people will simply keep their inventions to themselves, as they did before, and as many do now.
  - adambatkin 5y ago
    The citation is literally The US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
    - theli0nheart 5y ago
      I asked for a citation of something that explicitly did not mention rewards to inventors / authors to accomplish this goal. 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.
civilized 5y ago
I read the patent claim and ignored the rest, as the pros in these threads have been recommending that we do. I paid careful attention to the colons and semi-colons. There is one claim and it is short and not hard to understand. Take a look for yourself, you should be able to get the gist in well under 5 minutes: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6289434B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6289434B1/en. 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?
- tyingq 5y ago
  If I give it some broad leeway, it sounds somewhat similar to the Parallax Propeller. This diagram, for example, has some resemblance to his claims: https://demin.ws/blog/english/2012/11/22/personal-mini-computer-on-parallax-propeller/propeller-block-large.jpg https://demin.ws/blog/english/2012/11/22/personal-mini-compu... Compare to his drawing: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/67/ad/43/be9618781f943a/US6289434-drawings-page-4.png 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".
ladyattis 5y ago
These kinds of patents really prove that we need to boost the budget for the USPTO since they're always having things like this slip through despite the prior art out there. It's much like the FTC in this situation where Congress knows that if the FTC is well funded then nonsense that businesses do won't get by so easily so they starve the beast just enough to keep it ineffective. I swear it's the same kind of setup for the patent office.
silexia 5y ago
Patent trolls are pure evil. The solution is to dismantle the system scummy patent attorneys built and use to steal from good companies. The entire patent system only serves to prevent competition through a government enforced monopoly. Why is there only one big aircraft manufacturer (Boeing) left in the US? Patents. Why is there only one major DB maker (Oracle)? Patents. Get rid of patents and you will greatly increased innovation and competition and the consumer will win.
- simiones 5y ago
  Isn't Microsoft (MSSQL) also a major player in the DB space?
- justshowpost 5y ago
  No way. Without patents some angry consumer would write such comment on lamb leather with goose feather. Just because ball-point pens, ink and cellulose paper would be... a trade secrets. Now think how much collaboration in exchange for royalties in your PC and whatever network equipment you just used to publish this opinion.

803 points by mkeeter 5y ago

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

whatshisface 5y ago
The lifetime value of having a patent is much higher than the lifetime value of any specific patent. That's because the scam works whether the patent is valuable or not. Invalidating a patent costs them the time it takes to get a new one.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Invalidating a patent costs them the time it takes to get a new one 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.
bob33212 5y ago
I think you could scare off a good number of these trolls by saying. "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."
- wiredfool 5y ago
  """Not only am I unintimidated by litigation; I sometimes rather miss it.""" https://www.audioholics.com/news/blue-jeans-strikes-back https://www.audioholics.com/news/blue-jeans-strikes-back
URSpider94 5y ago
In that case, the troll can almost always just drop the suit and then you have no claim against them.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > the troll can almost always just drop the suit and then you have no claim against them I do not believe that would suspend an inter partes review [1]. Of course, if this method of relief is not available the above wouldn't work. [1] https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/trials/inter-partes-review https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/trials/inter-partes-revie...
simiones 5y ago
This only works if the patent troll believes the patent can be invalidated. This is rather hard for many patents - a lot of the time patent trolls own legitimate patents, they just try to apply them over-broadly. You would defeat them in court, but would not automatically invalidate their patent - you may only be able to show that their claims do not cover your work.

FridayoLeary 5y ago

> Patent trolls are Americans that are destroying American manufacturing and small business Why should the identity of their victims matter? Also, are they?

dbt00 5y ago
> > Patent trolls are Americans that are destroying American manufacturing and small business > 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.
- Covzire 5y ago
  Democrats have a chance at overhauling the Patent system tomorrow, the pathetic nature of these thieves is hated across the entire political spectrum and it would pass with an overwhelming support if voted on by itself.

desine 5y ago

Interesting read. Much more in-depth bullshittery than the usual patent troll. I love sparkfun, I've spent far too much money there building small trinkets, but I like supporting a local independent shop, and getting quality builds, rather than waiting and risking lower quality direct from Shenzen. I'm almost glad they got hit by the troll, because they're one of the companies with the wherewithal and life to blow them out of the water.

yborg 5y ago
Once the law firm realizes that their potential score here is at best in the low hundreds of dollars, they will undoubtedly never follow up. It's like any spam, the few victims they land on will pay for dozens of pointless filings.

fossuser 5y ago

I wonder if it's possible to make some sort of patent troll insurance company. 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.

qbasic_forever 5y ago
Hold on, I'm going to go patent this idea. :)
alisonkisk 5y ago
1. This is called a patent pool. It's very common. 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.
- staticautomatic 5y ago
  You can preemptively sue them, albeit not for infringing on your IP. It’s called declaratory relief.
  - _jal 5y ago
    You can only try that if you know they exist.
    - staticautomatic 5y ago
      Sure, but they have to come up for air sooner or later.
  - ineedasername 5y ago
    Unfortunately it would basically be an ongoing DDoS on the court system to try to get declaratory relief for existing garbage patents and the never ending stream if them created every day.

ohazi 5y ago

> > The cost is further reduced by employing only static or dynamic ram as a means for holding the state of the system. [...] > Dynamic ram? Can I poke fun at them for not knowing what RAM is? Yes I can. > The above paragraph succinctly describes malloc(), which is perhaps one of the most fundamental advancements in modern computing. The problem is that Al didn’t invent it. Memory management (the ability to take RAM 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...

sharemywin 5y ago
I remember when I toured a research nuclear reactor and I was talking with the nuclear phd student and I said something about an alpha particle and the protons and neutrons. And they were trying to say alpha particles aren't made up of protons and neutrons. Made me realize than that even an expert in the field might not know something that I would have thought was common knowledge.
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  There are some pretty obvious followup questions: - What are alpha particles made of? - When an element undergoes alpha decay, its atomic number is reduced by two. Where do the protons go?

av3csr 5y ago

I think MAUs are multiply-accumulate units.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
So, like DSPs have had forever?
- av3csr 5y ago
  Yep, nothing novel about it
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

postmeta 5y ago

Do the people that work there know it's a troll company I wonder? Maybe like working at an MLM company, you've rationalized it in your own mind as protecting inventors and creative people! https://www.linkedin.com/company/ip-edge-llc https://www.linkedin.com/company/ip-edge-llc

unclekev 5y ago
From their LinkedIn > 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.

W-Stool 5y ago

Did I miss in the article what the author plans to do about this? It is one thing to poke fun at patent trolls, but when you are the target of the troll legally you need to do something. What's their response going to be?

mrandish 5y ago
Until and unless you've actually been sued in a relevant court, you don't need to do anything (and frankly probably shouldn't, it's like replying to spam). It appears Spark Fun has actually been sued in this instance, which is a slightly more aggressive form of trolling. IANAL but I am a very experienced serial entrepreneur (and after a few decades you've pretty much seen all the relevant flavors of this shit). Spark Fun probably didn't say anything about their specific response in this case because the general and prudent advice is to never publicly discuss anything about an active suit without really good reason. 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.

kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

I was under the impression that modern patents had to have a clear list of claims but this one has nothing but technobabble and "1 Claim, 64 Drawing Sheets". How was this approved?

mikedilger 5y ago
I'm pretty sure the patent office has been doing less and less actual work, approving more and more patents, and figuring that the courts can sort it out.
defaultname 5y ago
What is the penalty for the USPTO if they grant patents that shouldn't have been granted? 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.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  I could see why seeing as they don't want to screw around with patent trolls either.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
It was approved in 2001. They weren't as tight on this kind of nonsense back then.
Taniwha 5y ago
As I've mentioned elsewhere here I suspect that most of this patent was originally written at least in part to establish prior-art and as a result to avoid future patent claims - it's some guy describing his quite valid new architecture - don't tear him down for that. 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

BeetleB 5y ago

BTW, for anyone who hasn't heard it, the This American Life episode linked to is absolutely worth listening to (or just read the transcript). They should link to the update to that story: Transcript: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/transcript https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/transcript Audio: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/496/when-patents-attack-part-two 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.

akudha 5y ago
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??!!
- compiler-guy 5y ago
  It’s a term you agree to when you sign the settlement to get them to go away the first time. And one of the reasons that you shouldn’t give in the first time either. It makes sense to sign it because they have you over a barrel.

Taniwha 5y ago

OK - so I vaguely skipped through the patent looking for claims - mostly it's a description of some guys possibly novel media processor architecture, remember the description is not the patent, the claims are. I could only find a short claims section at the end (1.5 pages out of 56). 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

leeter 5y ago
nVidia and Sony actually cited this patent I'd think you'd need to look further back. I'd guess Cray? This seems like something they would have patented very early on with the Cray1.
- Taniwha 5y ago
  Oh there's lots of prior-art way before Crays (B5500, CDC6700 - mid sixties for example) 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

AlbertCory 5y ago

Me: software engr, retired; also patent agent who worked in Google Patent Litigation. 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.

a1371 5y ago
How did you learn to read the claims?
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  I took the Kayten course [1] to review for the Patent Bar exam. It was three days, and then I spent a couple months reviewing all the old exam questions. [1] https://passingpatentbarwithprg.tumblr.com/post/9992218513/why-im-taking-the-prg-patent-bar-review-course https://passingpatentbarwithprg.tumblr.com/post/9992218513/w...
  - gyc 5y ago
    Note that the patent bar exam tests you on knowledge of rules and regulations of the patent office and of the Patent Cooperation Treaty that many countries have signed on to. So you won't necessarily learn to draft a patent or how to read a patent just by studying materials for the patent bar exam.
    - AlbertCory 5y ago
      True. Like anything, you only learn the REAL practice of it by doing it. In my case, I found a lawyer who made a practice of taking novices & training them (then they'd eventually go on to higher-paying jobs).
akersten 5y ago

P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul 5y ago

Why not just kill patent trolls? That should solve this problem real quick.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

ww520 5y ago

(Note that none of the following is legal advice.) 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. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US6289434B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6289434B1/en

hellbannedguy 5y ago
Thank you. I'm glad I stopped by HN today. You write well.
5y ago

kens 5y ago

I like SparkFun and I don't like patent trolls, but I have to say that SparkFun's mockery of the patent doesn't make sense. It is pretty clear that this patent was written by an engineer describing their actual system in great detail followed by one fairly narrow claim. I've seen many patents that are mostly written by lawyers, and I don't see any influence of lawyers in this patent. 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.

nixpulvis 5y ago
I'm no patent lawyer either, but I skimmed over the pages of "434" and it's clearly a bunch of half baked shit. Can you list one novelty in there worthy of patent, even for 1998? 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.
- colanderman 5y ago
  If you "skimmed pages" you are reading the wrong pages. The only page that matters is the final one, the text after "I Claim". It is very narrow (as the GP points out), and for something that probably actually existed and did something arguably, if minutely, novel. It sounds like a particular implementation technique for some sort of MIMD vector processor. The entire rest of the document is explicatory, and indicates nothing about what was actually patented, just about how the invention is actually used in a system.

AlbertCory 5y ago

The patent is indeed expired (there's a website that will tell you that date, but I forget its URL), but they can still sue for infringement that took place before the expiration date. If the total damages are small (as it appears), then you are probably costing them more than the suit is worth. So I'd expect them to offer to settle for a token amount, to avoid having an official loss on the record. But IANAL and this is not legal advice.

arvindamirtaa 5y ago
> offer to settle They can do that. But there isn't much leverage for them if they do that. They'll be giving their hand away and at that point SparkFun has almost no reason to pay a single dollar. Disclaimer : IANAL
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  At Google I went to a talk by a former patent troll about their business models. They buy a patent, and then milk it for what it's still worth. Eventually that goes to zero. If they lose a case publicly, then it's zero immediately. If they settle privately, then the patent is still useful against other victims. The main goal isn't to get $$ from SparkFun -- it's to keep SparkFun from destroying their asset.
  - arvindamirtaa 5y ago
    That's interesting. So, they won't mind if the amount is $10 or even $0 as long as the headlines read "SparkFun and $PatentTroll settle for an undisclosed sum".

civilized 5y ago

Why not just abolish patents? Who or what would oppose this?

Ballas 5y ago
Well patents were designed so that you give away your "recipe" in exchange for a limited time monopoly. Clearly that is still a valid use case, but it seems that with patent trolls, patents are getting misused. Software patents should 100% be abolished - for the same reason that mathematical formulas are not patentable.

ajnin 5y ago

Don't patents examiners receive bonuses based on the number of patent applications they process? And isn't accepting a patent basically checking a box, while rejecting one requires an argumented memoir and a lengthy back and forth discussion with the applicant and an appeal process? The patent system is skewed by design towards accepting patents too easily. I don't believe that patents are entirely harmful, but I think they actually hinder progress in 95% of the cases. The system works like this by design, and a lot of interests rely on it. It will be very hard to fix.

acomjean 5y ago
I’m not sure about the bonus situation, but the US patent office is self funding (their budget is filing fees), so they’re is the perverse incentive to approve more patents.
patentatt 5y ago
They do receive bonuses for doing more work, not necessarily for granting a patent. And you’re dead wrong on the second part, it’s way way way way easier to write a rejection than issue a patent because there’s a good chance the applicant will file a continuation and you’ll get more counts for the same work for an application that you already know well and have done the legwork on. So no, examiners are not incentivized to grant bullshit parents in any way shape or form. Source: former examiner, current patent attorney who works with examiners regularly.
- rrss 5y ago
  There's sort of a lot of literature that suggests that the USPTO does have a number of incentives to grant invalid patents. Even if they are all mistaken, this suggests to me that the issue is not as clear-cut as you say. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1756-2171.12021 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-the-patent-offices-incentives-to-grant-invalid-patents/download https://law.utexas.edu/faculty/publications/2017-decreasing-... https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Frakes_Michael_IPSC_paper_2014.pdf https://www.law.berkeley.edu/files/Frakes_Michael_IPSC_paper... https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/0895330054048650 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).

FpUser 5y ago

I do not want to go in the details of particular case. My opinion is that in general the paten system had outlived its purpose since some time and is now nothing but a detriment to society. It only benefits big corps at the expense of everybody else. 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.

keithnz 5y ago

I wonder whether I could get GPT3 to write patents for me so I can be lazy patent troll? hmmm

cycomanic 5y ago

I've said it before, but if you support the patent system, but say patent trolls should be abolished you are essentially saying that patents are only for big corporations to protect their turf from new incomers. 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.

jdmichal 5y ago
> 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? 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.

DarkmSparks 5y ago

Austin Meyer of XPlane fame did a good documentary on this a few years back. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/johngreathouse/2019/11/08/this-entrepreneur-turned-a-nasty-patent-fight-into-a-compelling-film/amp/ 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.

_pmf_ 5y ago

> So imagine you’re a small business Is SparkFun considered to be a small business?

croo 5y ago

The comments are about the contradictions between the patent and the blog post and the technical discussion are great. I would point out another angle. 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.

AHappyCamper 5y ago

Reading that article makes me not want to open a business in the USA, and I really want to open a business in the USA...

legel 5y ago

I have personally enjoyed community SparkFun events in Boulder, Colorado, which were hosted at a level that was both cool and fun for kids, adults, and experts alike. A really creative and intelligent company. Thanks Nathan for the courage to publish this, and helping other entrepreneurs inventing the future, to not be afraid to call fraud (and prior art) exactly what it is.

cormacrelf 5y ago

Altair Logic actually sued Asus as well in 2019, after the patent had expired in 2018, alleging that Asus sold products infringing exactly this patent 6,289,434 before then. Asus tried, unsuccessfully, to get it dismissed, so we'll see where it goes later. 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-intl 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.)

nkssy 5y ago

It might help if the patent dispute involved or required actual instantiations of the content of the patent. 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?

ncphil 5y ago

The terms for both patent and copyright are way too long. Instead of increasing over the years as we advanced further into the Digital Age, they should have been gradually decreasing. The whole point of the US patent and copyright system is not to "give a special reward" to inventors and authors, but to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts" by building up the public domain commons of inventions and art. The current law, with its lenghthy terms and slipshod processes that invite abuse by trolls and encourage the smothering oppression by monopoly power, is at odds with those original goals. It needs to be torn down completely and rebuilt for this not-so-new century.

theli0nheart 5y ago
> The whole point of the US patent and copyright system is not to "give a special reward" to inventors and authors, but to "promote the Progress of Science and the useful Arts" by building up the public domain commons of inventions and art. First, citation needed. Second, these two things are not at odds. People require incentives. If you want people to submit their inventions to the public domain, you do need to provide them with economic incentives for it. Otherwise, people will simply keep their inventions to themselves, as they did before, and as many do now.
- adambatkin 5y ago
  The citation is literally The US Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries."
  - theli0nheart 5y ago
    I asked for a citation of something that explicitly did not mention rewards to inventors / authors to accomplish this goal. 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.

civilized 5y ago

I read the patent claim and ignored the rest, as the pros in these threads have been recommending that we do. I paid careful attention to the colons and semi-colons. There is one claim and it is short and not hard to understand. Take a look for yourself, you should be able to get the gist in well under 5 minutes: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6289434B1/en https://patents.google.com/patent/US6289434B1/en. 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?

tyingq 5y ago
If I give it some broad leeway, it sounds somewhat similar to the Parallax Propeller. This diagram, for example, has some resemblance to his claims: https://demin.ws/blog/english/2012/11/22/personal-mini-computer-on-parallax-propeller/propeller-block-large.jpg https://demin.ws/blog/english/2012/11/22/personal-mini-compu... Compare to his drawing: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/67/ad/43/be9618781f943a/US6289434-drawings-page-4.png 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".

ladyattis 5y ago

These kinds of patents really prove that we need to boost the budget for the USPTO since they're always having things like this slip through despite the prior art out there. It's much like the FTC in this situation where Congress knows that if the FTC is well funded then nonsense that businesses do won't get by so easily so they starve the beast just enough to keep it ineffective. I swear it's the same kind of setup for the patent office.

silexia 5y ago

Patent trolls are pure evil. The solution is to dismantle the system scummy patent attorneys built and use to steal from good companies. The entire patent system only serves to prevent competition through a government enforced monopoly. Why is there only one big aircraft manufacturer (Boeing) left in the US? Patents. Why is there only one major DB maker (Oracle)? Patents. Get rid of patents and you will greatly increased innovation and competition and the consumer will win.

simiones 5y ago
Isn't Microsoft (MSSQL) also a major player in the DB space?
justshowpost 5y ago
No way. Without patents some angry consumer would write such comment on lamb leather with goose feather. Just because ball-point pens, ink and cellulose paper would be... a trade secrets. Now think how much collaboration in exchange for royalties in your PC and whatever network equipment you just used to publish this opinion.