3 ms·

It's definitely lazy that they didn't create their own description, but how does it follow from this that they can't?

• ncmncm 5y ago
  If it's published, it is prior art.
  • MauranKilom 5y ago
    They are not trying to patent what's shown in the figures, those are just given as background information. A patent for a screwdriver will most certainly also describe screws, regardless of whether screws are prior art. Patentability is solely a matter of the claims made at the end. Those claims will of course be interpreted in the context set out by the method description, but it is entirely normal for a patent to describe the state of the art before discussing a novel method (about which actual claims are then made). (IANAL)
    • temac 5y ago
      It's still blatant copyright infringement at least.
      • jjnoakes 5y ago
        IANAL but I would have thought that referencing material for prior art would have fallen under fair use.
• monocasa 5y ago
  Yeah, to me it just implies they don't want to actually leak any confidential information about their architecture since those details aren't really relevant to the patent (which is about snooping cache line zeroing in a cleaner way), so they just described their competitors overall uarch. Stealing lines from an anandtech article is a line to far though IMO.
• jrk 5y ago
  Patents are generally not written by engineers. They are written by patent attorneys / outside consultants. The engineers have a few conversations with the attorneys, and share technical material (in this case, something specific about cache coherence). The attorneys/consultants then generate a hundred pages of patent-ese scaffolding. The plagiarized content: 1. Is not what is being patented here. 2. Is not created by Intel engineers (or likely even Intel employees). They're busy designing chips.