Sony Sued for Blu-Ray Patent Violation 153
Jaidan writes "According to a Gamespot article, a California-based company named Target Technology is suing Sony over patents it allegedly holds for silver based reflective surfaces. The suit claims that products marketed under the Blu-ray name infringe on a patent it owns for reflective layer materials in optical discs. Target is seeking a permanent injunction preventing Sony from violating its patent rights in the future, as well as damages with interest, multiplied due to what it characterizes as deliberate and willful infringement. ' The patent addresses what Target called a need for specific types of silver-based alloys with the advantages (but not the price) of gold. According to the patent, the alloys are also more resistant to corrosion than pure silver. Target does not specify in its suit whether it believes all of Sony's Blu-ray discs infringe on its patent, or the suit applies to just a portion of the discs manufactured. The patent was filed in April of 2004 and granted in March of 2006.'"
Think fast... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's for a physical substance, that was developed by someone, which performs better/differently than anotehr compound used for the same purpose.
Isn't this what patent protection should be for?
Hope they fight (Score:2, Insightful)
Sony Sued for Something (Score:4, Insightful)
This is news?
Then again, is this just another case of patent whoring? again, news?
Until the nightmare that is patenting computer technology/software is fixed/destroyed, these kinds of things will not be news, just a common occurrence/nuisance.
Re:Think fast... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nowhere in the article or in the summary is there a reference to a bogus patent. Why the hell did *you* jump to the conclusion that this was bogus?
Patents Citing Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
But this looks like I could draft up a generic patent about triple layering and/or quadruple layering of data on discs and apply for the patents then just sit back and wait for someone to try and use it. I would reference all the dual layering patents and all that jazz. Would you call my ideas innovative or just common sense? Would it seem right that I didn't even have to implement these solutions? I don't know, I can think of instances where one could argue either way and this is what is inherently wrong with the patent system. Of course, I don't know how to fix it but I don't like how it works right now.
Re:Think fast... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personally, I think patents should be "if you don't use it, you lose it" because what good does it do us if an idea is patented and the company just sits around waiting for a larger one to use it? The patent system is broken and so is the mentality of about half the patent holders that use it. It's no longer about protecting your intellectual property, it's about the tricks you can play to get insane sums of money. How long did NTP wait for RIM to expand and grow? A long time. It's not currently wrong but morally they've gotta be approaching some sort of evil.
Re:Sony Sued for Something (Score:3, Insightful)
Unless you are against ALL patents, I don't really see a huge problem here.
And yes, it is news.
Re:Sony Sued for Something (Score:5, Insightful)
As for material sciences [e.g. making a disc] it could quite possibly not have been obvious that a given composition of alloys make a highly reflective corrosion resistant material. Just because something is computer related doesn't mean it's software. Of course, just because you got a patent for it doesn't mean you deserved it too...
Tom
Good patent, bad company. (Score:3, Insightful)
The part about this suit that I think should be more obvious is this: (FTA) "it [Target] characterizes as deliberate and willful infringement." That makes me think that they came up with the technology, applied for the patent, then attempted to sell/license the technology to Sony. Sony declined, but then used the technology anyways, knowing full well that someone else held the patent on it. I don't know that for fact though, it is pure speculation.
To me, this sure looks like a case of a large corporation abusing a smaller corporation that has a valid patent.
-Rick
Re:Not enough information (Score:2, Insightful)
I am all for patent bashing, but i am not a chemist, nor is most of slashdot.
Unless this is an obvious leap, this is EXACTLY what patents are for. It's not software, it's not the human genome, and it's a novel invention that includes both the method and the compound used. That is the epitome of somethign that someone should be able to patent so they can resell it for awhile to make money off it.
For the car analogy requirement: I would almost give this akin to, say, developing a new method of making spark plugs that are cheaper. Why wouldn't that be patentable?
For all the talk on slashdot about normal people getting stupid and losing common sense whenever technology is involved, there sure is some of it in our little group here.
Re:Patents Citing Patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Even though the company failed to find a sun tanning solution, shouldn't they be able to patent their new ED drug?
-Rick
Re:Think fast... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Will Sony be driven out of video games? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Think fast... (Score:3, Insightful)
At least in the U.S., an alloy is patentable. 35 U.S.C. 101 [cornell.edu]:An alloy is considered a 'composition of matter' and the recipe for producing it is considered a 'process'. While some people believe that items simply found in nature should not be patentable, most people agree that something that has to be brewed according to a recipe is patentable. (The exception being those people who advocate the complete abolition of patents.)
Re:Think fast... (Score:2, Insightful)
You can patent anything under the sun made by man.
However, there are a lot of reasons NOT to patent something.
First, you might not be able to patent anything. the composites and alloys might not be new, novel or nonobvious. Therefore, filing a patent application might spoil a perfectly good secret and you get no protection since it'll be published
Second, patents have a really short lifetime (now, 20 years from the application date). On the other hand, trade secrets gave be indefinite. There's no disclosure requirements.
Finally, determining the composite/alloy (or the process to make it) may be impossible merely by examining the finished product. A number of companies working with carbon fiber materials and some other exotic materials quickly realized that it may be impossible to tell what they consist of with any degree of accuracy without entirely ruining the substance. This is a perfect place for a trade secret (you get the same thing happening with nanotech inventions).
More general use prior art (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean something like : rubber duckies areobject made out of rubber floating on water, and someone publishing a special patent about putting floating rubber duckies in a bucket of water ?
Because that's what this guy has made. He has patented every possible silver alloy for making reflective surfaces in data storage medium. He basically just "patented mirror" as put by another
(It would be fun if some translation from an antique language was produced as evidence of prior art. Old-language geeks from around the world will rejoice)
I am specially sceptic, given the fact that one of the classical technique to circumvent patents is to make some form of more general stuff (general purpose algorithm in case of computer-patents, etc.) that does a lot of stuff and which has one specific type of applications that may look like the patent.
The arithmetic coding patent in data compression was circumvented with range coding in this way.
(arithmetic coding codes a sequence using a floating point number between 0 and 1 whose precision is arbitrarily high. range coding is the more general technique code data using a range of number between two arbitrarily set end points using a long binary sequence. arithmetic coding is just the special case where range boundaries are [0;1] and where binary format = float.)
Re:Think fast... (Score:3, Insightful)
How much research goes into developing harder steels for the sake of competitive advantage? From an industry perspective having a harder steel is only good if you are the only one to market it. It is also really really hard to hide what the alloy is. We've gotten pretty good at analytical chemistry, crystallography, and SEM, so a competent lab will have no problem figuring out the proportions of your alloy. Sure there is more to alloys than just the composition, but those other things can be figured out too.
Without patents metallurgy and material science would be held back which would affect a whole plethora of industries (efficient jet engines e.g.)
I haven't read the article, but I suspect what we have here is a submarine patent, which stinks an entirely different odor from obvious patents.
Re:Patents Citing Patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, Edison got a patent for the idea of taking a thin wire, heating it up in a vacuum, and have it produce light. The hard hard work going through hundreds of materials until he found one that worked well is not patentable, it is the idea.
Re:Think fast... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm done with patents!!! (Score:2, Insightful)
In the end who really pays for this bullshit; you and I twice. Once cause we pay every court clerk that touchs this trash, as well as every judge and/or jury on the case. Most of the time judges have to pay experts to try to explain why it even makes since that I have a patent for a big purple spider button on my laptop. The second place we pay is in every product we buy. Even if a company isn't being sued, they still retain 1 to 1000 lawyers in case any thing might cause them to be sued or they can sue some one else.
At the end of the day patients just protect companies from competing for the best product. If they do something that say reduces time of production, they patent the process, thus ensuring they can bleed more profit longer from the same product. In the end this same company could have looked at the market and entered it at a lower price, and by doing so increased market share. During that period they win because they make more money, the consumer wins because they can purchase the same prduct for less money. Their competitors must now figure out a way to make either a better product or reduce the price of the existing one, and then the consumer wins again. Currently companies see patents as a way to avoid living in the free market. Microsoft would for example prefer threating linux users instead of competing with linux with their own product. So every windows user out there should know that part of the price you pay for your product is not going back into development of a better or cheaper product. Instead your dollar is being spent on lawyers who call up your tax payed federal courts, to attempt to prevent development of a product that offers you a choice in the market place. Tell me who wins in this kind of system.
Patents are quickly turning into the largest assult on free market capitalism since Karl Marx picked up a pen. Now don't even get me started on copyright.
Re:Think fast... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Think fast... (Score:3, Insightful)