Wednesday, March 28, 2012

We only needed SGI ('s remnant) in Patent War!!

This is why Patent policies should be revamped completely. Some day they can even patent the process of breathing (who knows some version is already patented).

Once beloved company Silicon Graphics which failed to keep up with technology trends wants to get last juice out of their patents. Most likely their intent is to increase value of their patents that someone like Apple or Google will buy their patent to shore up their defense against each other.

Off-the-late, all this patent war has become only good for patent lawyers. I guess, all the companies should sit together and decide to dump all the patents stop worrying about patents. Just focus on innovation and keep building great things such as iPhone, iPad etc.. :-)The amount they are spending on patent wars could be better spend on extra R&D and would yield better results to them. I know that this is only wishful thinking and legal advisors will never let this happen as it will be suicide for them.

In this case, SGI may really have some very basic Computer Graphics Patents which might be used by every company producing any image rendering on LCD etc. But that was history and they should be let go.. Moreover, why SGI is waking up now. They should also put some limitations of how long you haven't tried to enforce. In this case, SGI remnant must be knowing about their patent violation long time back. If they were sleeping till now, they should allowed to sleep forever..


PATENT DISPUTE

SGI remnant sues Apple, other phone makers


Apple, Sony and four other companies were sued by Graphics Properties Holdings, formerly known as Silicon Graphics, for allegedly infringing a patent through their sale of mobile phones and other electronic
 devices. The lawsuits against Apple, Japan-based Sony, Taiwan-based HTC, South Korea-based LG Electronics and Samsung, as well as BlackBerry maker Research In Motion, were filed in the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del. The patent at issue relates to a computer graphics process that turns text and images into pixels to be displayed on screens.

According to the lawsuits, the defendants’ infringing devices include Apple’s iPhone and the HTC Evo4G, LG Thrill, Research In Motion Torch, Samsung Galaxy S and Galaxy
 S II, and Sony Xperia Play smartphones. Graphics Properties said that unless the alleged infringements are halted, it will suffer irreparable harm. The lawsuits seek to stop the sale of infringing products and also seek reasonable royalties and other damages. 

1 comment:

Anand Srivastava said...

Patents as defined presently are evil.
Any patent that is actually useful should have two properties.
1) It should define a useful technological device.
2) It should not be easily copy-able.

Such patents are rare.

Currently patents are more of a revenue stream for the government. This is why they have been adding more and more methods into patenting. Also they are easing the rules so that they get more patent applications.

The whole system should be scrapped.