On Feb 8, 4:18 am, Bernd Paysan wrote:
> rickman wrote:
>> I had the impression that Intel decided to pay off on the patent
>> which may have been a lump sum rather than a royalty. I am sure they
>> are getting cash from other companies that have no reason to dispute
>> the patent.
>
> Yes. Well "no reason" means: they think it's more expensive to dispute the
> patent than to pay. It's like when a highwayman threatens you with a gun,
> and you calculate that it's better for you to give him all your money
> rather than risking to be badly injured. Unfortunately, in the patent case,
> you can't do what you can in the highwayman case: you can't inform the
> legislative later, and get your money back if the claim was unjust.
I don't see how the analogy is at all valid. It is just BS to claim
that patent holders are highwaymen. In fact, if you can show that you
are being unreasonably harrased by a patent holder, they can be
countersued for damages including lawyer fees.
So get off your high horse and accept the fact that patents are valid
and reasonable. If people are using them to extort, that is a matter
that can be dealt with, but it does not make patent holders
"highwaymen".
>> Perhaps, but that is not what the author meant. He was implying that
>> the fees collected would cause financial problems for the consumers of
>> products with CPUs. I think this is over exaggerated.
>
> I don't know how much they want. People can produce small CPUs now for a
> couple of dimes, so even a cent per CPU would cause problems.
That still does not address the issue at hand. If there was a 1 cent
royalty on a 20 cent MCU would it make the product so expensive that
consumers would not buy it? I guess it might have to cost $1.01 and
therefore couldn't be in the dollar store anymore. In reality the
product would be redesigned (either the end product or the MCU) to not
infringe on the patent. This type of product has a life of a year or
so anyway, so they just use a different MCU on the next product so
that it does not infringe.
>> Given that the
>> claimant is a public interest group, I find this patent an odd one to
>> dispute.
>>> As someone who supports Forth, you end up answering questions like "Your
>>> friend Chuck Moore send us this threatening letter...", and then you have
>>> to explain some things.
>
>> Do they actually use his name in the letter? I guess if they know
>> about Mr. Moore, they know about PTSC or they learn quickly after
>> getting the letter.
>
> They used the patent numbers. If you look up the patents, you see the
> inventor's name, and that's Chuck Moore. So yes, you have to tell them
> about PTSC and how it relates (or rather how it does not relate) to Chuck
> Moore.
So how does it relate to Chuck Moore? Why is Chuck trying to take my
kids college fund money!!!???
>> I don't have a problem with any of the above. The USPTO does what
>> they can.
>
> No, they don't. They have a bad quality management in place. They
> essentially award examiners for granted patents, not for successfully
> refused ones. The European Patent Office last year wanted to introduce
> something similar, and the examiners went on strike as a response. Not that
> the EPO has good quality control, either.
Are you saying that Chuck's patent should not have been granted? Is
Chuck one of "those" inventors who just want to get a patent so they
can sue everyone? Or is this a valid patent and Chuck deserves a
royalty on every CPU that infringes?
>> I am sure it is a very tough job to be expert enough in the
>> field to know about most if not all prior art and yet not be an active
>> researcher in the field.
>
> But the field of microprocessor patents is so huge that they really could
> and should afford some experts in that field.
Are you saying that they don't have any experts in this area?
>> If they didn't require you to work in
>> Crystal City near Washington, DC, I would consider applying for a
>> position. I think it could be a fun job to learn as much as possible
>> about an area of expertise and then evaluate applications. I'm sure
>> there is a heavy downside to working for the US government.. I know
>> first hand in fact. But it might be worth it.
>
> It's not worth it, because you won't be rewarded for your expertise. You'll
> get less patents granted than your coworkers, and therefore, you'll be an
> underperformer.
That is an assumption that is not supported by facts. I can be very
motivated by financial rewards. ;^)
>> I worked on the periphery of the cell phone market for a while and
>> everyone was developing their own algorithms, then fighting to get
>> them standardized. But there are a lot of competing standards for
>> cell phones now, so I don't know what has happened with the royalty
>> fees. I do remember that V.90 modems had some $10 worth of fees for
>> the various patents involved. That was a similar situation where a
>> lot of different companies had individual pieces of the puzzle.
>> Rather than to agree to make them all public, they all agreed to make
>> them all part of the standard and pay each other fees.
>
> Do they actually pay the fees or just pool the patents up?
That was the point. If the pooled the patents, then anyone could join
the party. They actually pay each other. Clearly this is good for a
company that ends up not competing as well as the others in producing
end products. They still get a share of the profits on units made by
others. That is the real point of patents. You do the inventing and
get money for being so clever.
>> Then any outsider would have to pay them all!
>
> The same is true for DVDs. There, the aggregated fees are about $20, i.e.
> about the same as the hardware parts today. The cheap Chinese DVD players
> have been reduced to domestic sales (none of the patents are valid in
> China), and China actually developed a patent free successor, the eDVD
> (sort of the VHS of the HD formats).
I expect DVD patents will be running out soon. I dread what will be
replacing them. This gets into the can of worms about copyright
protection which is a whole other mess!
>> I don't see how you can compare bribery or slavery to patents. That
>> is a just silly. Patents have a very valid place in ensuring that an
>> inventor has the opportunity to reap exclusive profits from a
>> potentially large investment in an invention. If you don't like
>> paying for a patent, then don't use it!
>
> No, that's silly. I don't use patents, i.e. I don't look up the patent data
> base to learn how to do things. I don't need that, I can innovate on my
> own, and it just might violate someone else's patent of which I know
> nothing (but I would have to pay nonetheless). And furthermore, the patent
> language is so awkward that it's mostly useless to read a patent to
> understand how things are done. Even in the case of your V.90 patents,
> you'll probably read the published standard instead of the 20 odd patents
> behind.
That is irrelevant. If someone else has already invented the idea,
you can't use it without paying royalties. Are you saying you feel
you should be able to re-invent things and not pay royalties? That
would make the whole patent process pointless. Anyone could say, "but
I invented that myself"!
> Complicated things like chips or software are already protected by
> copyright. That's enough protection to get your money back. There might be
> places where patents make sense, but not in a complex environment where a
> chip or a piece of software already violates hundreds of patents.
Nonsense. A copyright only protects a single expression of a work.
If I invented a great new way of emplementing a stack using shift
registers, you would be free to reverse engineer my chip and design
your own using my ideas! A patent gives me an exclusive right to use
my idea for 21 years. After that it is public domain. That is the
real public interest in patents. The idea is made public when the
patent is granted and after 21 years it is public domain. So now
anyone can build a telephone or any of millions of inventions.
Otherwise a lot of science would be kept behind closed doors much
longer than the issuance of a patent.
> Especially the US way of granting patents for whatever humans can invent or
> discover is clearly beyond bounds. That's how slavery comes into the
> picture: I have no problem with limited ties between employer and employee,
> but an employee being owned by the employer is clearly too much.
That is silly. No one owns an employee. My employer owns the things
I invent because they are paying me to do that. If the invention
agreement is overly wide it is because they don't want to give me any
loopholes to steal from them, not because they expect me to invent the
next big thing so they can steal it. They just don't want me to go
into business competing with them because I managed to invent
something just on the other side of the line. If I really had an idea
that I thought was useful, I would leave before working on it in any
substantial way. Then the invention would be all mine! Or if I
wanted, I could negotiate with them to allow me to work on it on my
own time. If it is not in their area of interest, they have no reason
to even worry about it. I have never had an employer try to own my
ideas outside of work.
>> If the complaint against you
>> is not valid, then it does not take much of a letter to say you don't
>> feel you are violating the patent. It doesn't even cost much to have
>> an attorney write a letter. If you can't afford a few hours of
>> attorney fees, then you likely are the turnip that the claimant can't
>> squeeze blood from.
>
> Well, we can, and we did that. But it's just like the highwayman thing. I
> can afford paying a few hundred bucks to a highwayman once a month or so,
> but I rather like not to run into highwaymans, and keep the money. They
> claimed we violated their patent, it's their duty to examine if we do. The
> data sheets of our chips are on our web-site, they could read through them
> and find out if one of the chips does indeed violate their patent. It's not
> that something like an internal faster clock is a hidden thing.
Again, poor analogy. You didn't pay the "highwaymen" anything. You
paid for a watchdog or a burglar alarm. The "highwaymen" got
nothing.
Do you think Chuck would appreciate being called a "highwayman"?
