While it's still just gearing up for its
litigious battle with Opti Inc., AMD is now facing another patent challenger (to put it kindly) in the form of Microunity,
The Inquirer reports, the very same company that recently took home a cool $300 million as a result of its patent dust up Intel. In this latest case, Microunity is alleging that AMD is infringing on twelve of its patents, including one for a "general purpose, multiple precision parallel operation programmable media processor," which Microunity says AMD violates in practically all of its processors, including various incarnations of the Athlon, Sempron, Turion, and Opteron. Any more exact details are a bit hard to come by at this point, but Microunity's apparently asking for a trial and an injunction for AMD to stop selling the products in question, as well as for its lawyers fees to be paid for and the always popular "enhanced damages." We'll be sure to put some coal in their stockings for ya, AMD.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
David @ Nov 24th 2006 2:38AM
Wow, just because someone THINKS of something does not give them the right to the profits of the person who actually made it happen. Thank god for liberals, this is all going to hell! (insert link to Michael Richards being sued here)
Joshua @ Nov 24th 2006 2:56AM
I think thats how the whole concept of patents work. You prove you thought of something first and you aren't required to ever actually market the idea.
Most likely they will settle this with lots and lots of money.
Zorque @ Nov 24th 2006 3:37AM
I think patents need a serious reform. If people have such great ideas, why don't they act on them instead of patenting them and then just waiting to sue? Because they're scared of investment? Well, sadly, that's how industry and the economy works. You have to put something in to get something. I think people who patent ideas and never bring them to fruition should have to pay massive fees to keep re-registering them every 5 years or so. Especially such vague and obvious concepts as we see so often these days.
Tech^Cellfish @ Nov 24th 2006 3:49AM
Vote for the Pirate Party in your country then ;)
Tony Rayo @ Nov 24th 2006 4:41AM
I thought for a patient to be approved you needed a proof of concept (aka working model). When you start patenting large ideas and concepts (which apparently has been going on for some time now), then these little companies that could have never come up with the complexity or design of larger ones can take them to court and get paid for coming up with a concept.
There has been calls for reform in the US Patent office for years, but it's such a big job no one even wants to think about trying, and that is truly sad. BTW the closest thing we have in the U.S. that comes close to the Pirate Party is the Green Party and all they are good for in recent elections are taking away votes from democrats x.x.... oh well, I'll be living in Tokyo soon. Not that it's any better than, but I will been surrounded by cute Japanese ladies and cheaper than importing Japanese goodies so my mind will be in a constant state of bliss regardless of the world's problems.
- Tony R.
ydgmdlu @ Nov 24th 2006 10:38AM
@Tony
Um, no. US patent law does not require proof of concept, just a detailed enough description in the file that anybody with the technical understanding and manufacturing capability could recreate the product by following the description.
Patents were designed to protect inventors, but they were also designed to ease the adoption inventions: The theory is that public disclosure of the workings of an invention will allow many willing and capable manufacturers to make and profit from the product, spreading its adoption, while the original inventor is compensated. Patents were not designed to allow one manufacturer to be the sole supplier of a product; that's the purpose of trade secrets.
However, patents also allow inventors who improve upon other inventions to prevent the inventors of the original inventions from receiving compensation, if that is mentioned in the patents. For example, if somebody invented a better, more complex mousetrap, he/she could state in his/her patent that the inventor of the original mousetrap must not be compensated. If the inventor of the improvement overlooks the existence of the original invention, then the original's inventor could sue for patent infringement.
Thus, a shady business like Opti, using a business model of suing big companies, is on solid legal ground here.
joram Oudenaarde @ Nov 24th 2006 5:04AM
This is just insane... "general purpose, multiple precision parallel operation programmable media processor" is just to widespread. There is not a single specific piece of information anywhere in that sentence other then that it's a processor ment for media. Anyone who's making a media-processor will be sued this way, no matter how they make it.
I seriously hope that Micountry will get the boot, and AMD can concentrate on what they do best... Patents really need a reform. If I think and patent an idea on moving without moving your feet, can I sue all who make cars, bikes and planes?
Sinbios @ Nov 24th 2006 5:59AM
That's the IDEA.
SOCOMRAIDER @ Nov 24th 2006 7:25AM
Well... I got my daily patent lawsuit fix for the day. Tomorrow I'm sure I will get another.
Karl Viklund @ Nov 24th 2006 9:13AM
I hope AMD sues the shit out of Microunity making them bankrupt.
Dave Pevsner @ Nov 24th 2006 11:09AM
i'm afraid to see what this is doing to my AMD stock.
screw these patent investment companies. screw them. as much as I was cheering for those assholes that sued RIM, i was just feeling anti-blackberry at the time, i'm booing these assholes that are suing AMD. and that guy who's suing all tablet PC makers because he "patented the hinge mechanism".
AMD's stuff is made in germany and across asia, this company's patent is in the US and is a cheap way to make money off legitimate companies, and this company probably just filed that patent for the purpose of suing.
Robert Sutherland @ Mar 26th 2007 6:02PM
Eeehh... WRONG!
Microunity had a 'partially' functioning 5-barrel processor (CMOS)using the patented features in 1996. Culprit was internal chip timing, not anything related to the patents. One of the barrels did boot UNIX.