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MIT Sues Sony over digital TV 160

Posted by Hemos from the battle-of-odd-giants dept.
dfinney wrote to us with a story from The Tech, concerning MIT suing Sony. Basically, MIT claims to have a number of patents, has worked with other folks in the industry, sez they've talked with Sony for a year, no headway, don't want to sue, but have key claims - etc etc.
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MIT Sues Sony over digital TV More

MIT Sues Sony over digital TV

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  • And We're OFF.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by darkPHi3er ( 215047 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @03:26AM (#2254657) Homepage
    when the economy is good all men and women are brothers and sisters...

    when times are BAD.....

    the Japanese economy just hit a two-decade (17 year to be more precise) low...

    Japanese banks are being given lending capital from the Central Bank at ***ZERO*** percent interest, and there are few-to-NO takers....

    at some point, the Intellectual Property War between the West and the East is really going to heat up

    historically, MIT has been very much a "Good Citizen" on the issues of cross/conflicting patents...Sony, historically, has been so-so

    could this be an early skirmish in the upcoming IP Wars????

    Now, if we're going to do "Lawyers At Dawn", I officially suggest that we carpet bomb Tokyo with attorneys from B-52's and B-1B's in HUGE WAVES
    • could this be an early skirmish in the upcoming IP Wars????

      That anything like The Clone Wars?
    • could this be an early skirmish in the upcoming IP Wars????

      Yes. The documentaries of it will be filmed in Japanese then overdubbed in Engrish for release in the States.

      Bits of intercepted communication between two combatants:
      15.123.21.168: Ha ha ha! My Class A makes your Unroutable C jelly!
      192.168.0.25: Our do not pay the rate for A. We are one C for Internet.
      15.123.21.168: All your NAT are belong to us!
      192.168.0.25: My policy DENY will hide ping from you!
      15.123.21.168: Make your DDOS.
      192.168.0.25: Default DROP every packet 15.123.21.168.
      192.168.0.25: For great QOS.
    • Now, if we're going to do "Lawyers At Dawn", I officially suggest that we carpet bomb Tokyo with attorneys from B-52's and B-1B's in HUGE WAVES.

      Cruel and unusual punishment. After all, isn't dropping one lawyer equivalent to roughly ten Hiroshima explosions?

      [Bring on the lawyer jokes!]
      • Naw...even at terminal velocity, they don't do much more than go *splat*. Air raid sirens would warn innocent civilians to hide under indoors under tables and away from skylights and the like.

        If we target law schools and legal firms, we can probably overwhelm them with the volume and mass of attorneys we drop as well as reduce their ability to retaliate.

        Move every justice...for great big *splat*
    • zero point interest *sounds* low, but its actually an artifact of foreign exchange rate movement.

      if you borrwed yen at 0%, brought it to the states and left it there to accrue interest in dollars, the exchange rate change when you complete the deal would theoretically deny you of all monetary benefits. there's no room for arbitrage.

      comparing inter-bank offering rates in different currencies can be misleading
  • you should never be lenient with these money hungry corporations. MIT should go for getting an injuction and get them to licence under their terms and make them pay big $$ or better still stop them from manufacturing (that'll hurt them really bad) cuz if they don't then they'll be setting a bad precedent and everyone will start taking the educational institutes for granted.
    MIT has devoted time and money into this research.. no one should be allowed to use it for free just cuz they're big and rich.
  • To see how well Sony reacts to somthing like this. Almost every time you hear the words 'lawsuit' and 'Sony' together Sony is the one doing the suing. Also what happens if Sony looses? I'm sure the competiton would love loosing Big Brother in the HDTV wars....

    • Re:I'm curious... (Score:4, Informative)

      by platypus ( 18156 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @06:05AM (#2254831) Homepage
      Sony _has_ been in court for patent infringment before. The case was about the walkman which a german inventor named Andreas Pavel claimed to have a patent for (granted 1977!)
      They stumped him with an armee of lawyers, court costs for him were abough 2.000.000 british pounds.
      Note that before that sony actually had payed him appr. 50.000$ - while they sold walkmen for a couple of billion $s worldwide.

      • Re:I'm curious... (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Fat Casper ( 260409 )
        It's nice to see this happeining with someone that Sony can't bury with lawyers. MIT isn't doing this for the money- they want a judgement. They aren't a lone inventor without the deep pockets needed to make Sony behave politely. This will be fun to watch.

  • Sony should be careful here. While MIT doesn't want a conflict, their Jedi are more than capable of turning the Sony corporate offices into the world's largest VU Meter [mit.edu]. And if that doesn't show them the light, how are they going to work without any offices [mit.edu].

  • It's 'bout time they paid up. (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If the roles were reversed, Sony would sue in a heartbeat & seek damages too.

    On the other hand one wonders, whether Sony will readily hire MIT graduates in the future.

    If certain colleges get labelled as sue happy will their graduates have a hard time getting hired by established corps?
    • Probably not. Unless it is the graduates doing the suing, it shouldn't be an issue. Face it, it's the administration who is doing this. And what company, in their right mind, is going to turn away possible highly qualified employees because of something they might not have even been a part of.

      Of course, if any of those graduates pull typical MIT pranks on Sony, then yes, I doubt they would be on the top of the hire list.

      Kierthos

    • Of course if the roles were reversed, most people here would be telling us how evil patents are and talking about boycotting Sony. Funny how that works, huh?

      • If the situation were reversed, MIT wouldn't stand to make billions off the stolen tech.

        • Stolen? (Score:1)

          by MfA ( 107204 )
          Just because a patent is alledgedly infringed doesnt mean they actively used that patent or resulting research in their development... there's always a good chance in any patent infringement that it was indepently developed, not that it matters one way or the other.

        • So are you the brave soul who steps forward to admit that what you guys are really fighting for has nothing to do with principles or freedom, but more about jealousy and hating to see other people making a lot of money?

      • But now patents are good, we get to see the little guy win (hopefully).

        I don't agree with most people on /. about IP.

        I always believed it was for Joe Sixpack who comes up with great idea X and while pitching it to company Y they steal X and sell his idea.

        But I do agree crazy patents on things like the question mark (LOL!! austi... fu'k it) where company Y is going to sue the pants off Joe Sixpack are wrong.

        But this case hopefully will make a lot of /.ers realize that if they ever come up with a great idea it can be protected from Sony, MS, Amazon etc because of the patent system.

        It's not going to go away. And people like Alan Parsons are happy because of that.

        No one wants to be raped, 'cept coyboy neal or cmdr fur taco - but they don't count as people. I patented them six months ago.....

        As I said in an earlier post on a different topic - the USA will be the first to award patents for breathing in thorough your nose and out through your mouth.

  • sez they've talked with Sony for a year

    U R IRCing 2 much when U think "sez" is OK. Drivz me nutz.

    (Bonus points if you recognize the source of my subject line.)

  • About TV... (Score:2, Funny)

    by manon ( 112081 )
    This might be a Judge Judy case ;)

  • graduate student inventions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mj6798 ( 514047 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @04:21AM (#2254737)
    A lot of the truly novel ideas at a place like MIT are developed by graduate students, often with little or no input from professors. That can make the ethical question of ownership of those ideas a bit murky: graduate students aren't exactly getting paid a lot, and what they do get paid often doesn't come from MIT funds (but instead from fellowships and government grants). Of course, legally, you can be sure that MIT's lawyers have it all nailed down airtight.

    I believe that in comparison to other educational institutions, MIT is quite a bit more enlightened, giving inventors 1/3 of any licensing revenues (at least in some departments). Universities like USF [usf.edu] (hint: a place probably best avoided by smart students) have their student inventors thrown in jail [ieee.org] if they want the exclusive rights to a promising invention.

    As for these specific patents, it would be interesting to know what they are for: do they really represent interesting inventions, or is it the kind of patent that claims "any television that uses a framebuffer and a CPU".

    • That can make the ethical question of ownership of those ideas a bit murky: graduate students aren't exactly getting paid a lot, and what they do get paid often doesn't come from MIT funds (but instead from fellowships and government grants). Of course, legally, you can be sure that MIT's lawyers have it all nailed down airtight.

      What the graduate students get out of it is that when they get their Ph.D., they are the foremost experts in the world in one subject. From the time of their discovery to the point they publish, they alone know the answer to a problem many people (if they choose their battles wisely) want answered.

      The point of academia is fame, not fortune. People who want to make their discoveries and get paid well for them go into industry, or become entrepreneurs. Academia is where you may not get paid for your idea, but everyone considers you an expert, and you get speaking engagements, press interviews, and the like.

      • Re:graduate student inventions (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        What the graduate students get out of it is that when they get their Ph.D., they are the foremost experts in the world in one subject.

        This is just not true. People who just received their PhD are rarely if ever considered the worlds foremost experts on any subject, including their dissertation topic. In most cases they'll generally have many more years of work to complete before establishing any sort of reputation for themselves, or even finding a position with any job security in academia.

        • Re:graduate student inventions (Score:1, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          I beg to disagree for the Ph.D. student is often
          the best in the world at what they do. Remember that the Ph.D. is awarded for depth not just breadth of knowledge. There are enough small niche areas that doctoral students almost invariably surpass their advisor's skill in their specialty.
      • >The point of academia is fame, not fortune.

        actually, the point is knowledge. not fame, not fortune.

        //rdj
        • > >The point of academia is fame, not fortune.

          > actually, the point is knowledge. not fame, not fortune.

          Oh no, the point really is both fame and fortune, it's just not polite to admit it :)

          /Janne
      • The point of academia is fame, not fortune. People who want to make their discoveries and get paid well for them go into industry, or become entrepreneurs.


        The whole issue is not about money, you are wrong there, but rather to get recognition for your ideas and inventions. After all they are YOUR ideas and inventions.

        So, if you make a discovery, it will be your discovery.

      • Re:graduate student inventions (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @07:50AM (#2254928) Homepage
        • The point of academia is fame, not fortune. People who want to make their discoveries and get paid well for them go into industry
        • I am under an NDA agreement. My employer decides who I may and may not share my knowledge with, and can legally gag me.
        • My employer owns all rights to my inventions.
        • My employer uses my inventions for their financial gain.

        From that description, you tell me whether I work in "academia" or "industry". There is no dividing line any more.

        • From that description, you tell me whether I work in "academia" or "industry". There is no dividing line any more.
          I can't tell if you are in academia or industry, but you either picked the wrong school or the wrong employer. There is a dividing line, if you stay away from huge corporations and huge universities.
            • I can't tell if you are in academia or industry, but you either picked the wrong school or the wrong employer

            At the time I chose them, they were a good employer. Then they turned evil, and I have a mortage to pay and stock options to wait on. Unlike in Dilbert, employers don't usually put signs outside saying "Evil Research Megalabs".

        • Sucks to be you. :)

          -Erik
        • The Patent and Trademark Office recognises the differences between inventing something and owning it and inventing something and not owning it. Work for hire is, in fact, the property of your employeer, if it is part of your job and/or contract.

          If you work for Microsoft and you discover the cure for diabetes while on vacation at your grandma's house in South Texas, it is yours.

          That is assuming you didn't sign away your life to your employeer.

          jrbd

    • Re:graduate student inventions (Score:4, Insightful)

      by krmt ( 91422 ) <therefrmhere@yah o o . com> on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @04:57AM (#2254777) Homepage
      While you're right about things being murky, you do have to remember that the University does fund a great deal, including lab space, supplies, and even simple administrative stuff like waste disposal (critical for biohazard), mail, phone, and internet. While salaries don't really come from anything but grants and Teaching Assistant stipends, the University does provide a lot of important stuff.

      I totally agree that the inventor should get a significant cut of the pie (I'm biased though, being an undergrad lab assistant ;-) you can't cut out the University because they are critical for a lot of reasons.
      • While salaries don't really come from anything but grants and Teaching Assistant stipends, the University does provide a lot of important stuff.

        All of the administrative overhead is covered by your grants and outside funding as well. Most places (depending on the university) take anywhere from 25-50% of your grant to cover overhead.
      • While you're right about things being murky, you do have to remember that the University does fund a great deal, including lab space, supplies, and even simple administrative stuff like waste disposal (critical for biohazard), mail, phone, and internet.

        That may be true in the biosciences, but in computer science and signal processing, even ten years ago, buying a research-capable workstation was a matter of a few thousand dollars (cheaper than today's high-end PCs), and the incremental cost of Internet access was pretty low even back then. Office space isn't all that expensive either in most places, and universities generally pay less. As others have pointed out, universities cover those expenses as "overhead" out of grants anyway. (I hope digital television research doesn't generate a lot of biohazards, btw.)

    • A four of those companies started as grad student projects
      (routers were a computer staff project).
      Stanford pretty much ignored them when they started
      companies. This is documented in Revenge of the
      Nerds, series II. And I used the the prototypes
      of the first three during my years at Stanford.
      In fact, the name SUN originally stood for Stanford
      University Network.

      On the other hand for each of these mega-successes,
      there are ten failures. Todays NY Times has a
      story about a Stanford student dropping out to
      start an unsuccessful dot.com, then returning
      to finish the degree. He says that his frathouse
      had eight dot.coms running on Stanford servers
      during the peak- none of them succeeding.

    • Actual facts are often useful in these discussions. See:

      The terms don't seem altogether unreasonable to me.
  • ...then why should a large overseas megacorporation like Sony be able to walk away with a HUGE amount of research, essentially for free.

    Intellectual property is important...and if MIT weren't allowed to file a patent on it, someone else who can, will.

    Then everyone gets screwed.

    • Because it also allows American small businesses and individual hackers to walk away with a huge amount of research, too. And no, it isn't free, because we all pay taxes, including Sony. Note that I'm not arguing whether or not MIT is federally funded or not, but if they were, then why should they be entitled to all the loot when the American people are the venture capitalists who are paying for the seed money?



  • Newsflash:

    While MIT is preoccupied with suing Sony for
    allerged intellectual property disputes, MIT
    itself got sued by those who originate the
    concept of INSTITUTION - in which, the word
    INSTITUTE is part of it.

    Great and dead Greek philosophers from ancient
    time, such as Socrates are among those who
    are trying to get back the INSTITUTION idea
    from MIT.

    If MIT lost the suit, MIT will have to drop
    the word "INSTITUTE" from its namesake.

    Therefore, it *IS* a possibility that we may
    see MT to replace MIT. Or perhaps, MUT -
    Massachusette *UNIVERSITY* of Technology.

    But then.... the intellectual concept of
    UNIVERSITY was not orginated from the campus
    of MIT either.

    Ah ... well.

    Stay tuned for the result !
  • Sony is a Japanese company. Does the US Legal system really have much right to tell a Japanese company what technologies it can and cannot develop?

    The only reasons I can think of for Sony to comply are Japanese surrender terms from World War 2, or trade agreements that would get Sony to recognize US patents. In that case, it would be the Japanese Govt who should be enforcing this, not the US courts.

    END COMMUNICATION
    • Last time I checked, Sony had a major business presence in the U.S. That would seem to imply that they need to play by our rules or go home.
    • Most governments (including the US and Japan) have signed up to WIPO (www.wipo.org), the World Intelectual Property Organisation, who's job it is expressly to manage multinational IP issues, and these kinds of issues are frequently upheld across national bounderies.

    • Does the US Legal system really have much right to tell a Japanese company what technologies it can and cannot develop?


      This would be a valid point if the patent described the process of making the hardware. That infringement at least potentially takes place completely outside the US would have to resort to asking other countries for help and if they didn't get it then resort to trade embargos or just give up.


      But more likely the patent describes the use of the product, and by selling the product in the US, Sony places itself under US jurisdiction for contributory patent infringement (selling a product which is designed for the primary purpose of infringing patents, essentially). Sounds pretty similar to what Dmitry Sklyarov was allegedly doing, doesn't it?

    • japan has already said fuck you [slashdot.org] to amazon over thier "one-click", so sony could thearitically just sell its infringing products outside of the us. Though this looks like a valid patent on not software(aka bullshit) patent, so it may not be in their best interests to do that. They still could if they wanted to, though.
    • Sony is almost completey owned by American instutitianl banks and other stock holders all over the world. While they could ignore US law, the US could grab almost all their banking assetts.
    • Whatever country you go to in the world, you have to obey their laws. The US is no exception. If you send your representatives to the US to do business, they must abide by the laws governing US businesses or suffer the consequences. WHile it's true that Sony proper might not be affected by a US decision, the courts could demand that all Sony assets in the US be seized or frozen.

      However, this is all moot, because there is a Sony Inc. in the US. Nyah.

    • Does the US Legal system really have much right to tell a Japanese company what technologies it can and cannot develop?

      You're kidding, right? Sony engages in a great deal of business in the United States. As a result, they need to play by the local rules. If they fail to respect US law, the US will simply spank everything within reach. Worst case, there are plenty of assets based the US to be seized, and we could refuse import of Sony products. Any multi-national corporation knows how this game is played and carefully toes the line in every country they do business in.

  • Google Cache of the page (Score:3, Informative)

    by defence budget ( 410076 ) on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @07:31AM (#2254911)
    The server appears to be down(/.tted?) The google cache of the page can be found here [google.com] or in geocities [geocities.com].

  • Ironic... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ...when I put the finishing touches to the library I developed for my Masters' degree, I wanted to make it freely available. I'm not so keen on the GPL, so I decided to use a... get this... "MIT style" license.

    These are the same people who brought us the X-window system, released under what is probably the least restrictive public license of them all, right? So why the sudden change of heart?

    OK, so there's a lot more money to be made out of digital TVs than there was out of a network-transparent client-server windowing system for UNIX. But YKWIM.
  • Another reason to want people to license to avoid a court battle is that you think you're gonna lose. I bet this is some undefensible patent or two, like Rambus's BS.

    Give em hell.
  • I'm glad I didn't get accepted to MIT. They've been officially declared 'evil' by the Slashbot collective.
    • And it was like living inside slashdot 24/7.

      (Actually a higher quality slashdot where
      everyone knows what they are talking about instead
      of the 20% here.)

  • Offtopic: While I was looking for the MIT patents on this digital TV stuff I ran across this:

    http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r =1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ft95&s1=Massachusetts&s2=Tec hnology&OS=Massachusetts+AND+Technology&RS=Massach usetts+AND+Technology [uspto.gov]

    Apparently Apple holds a patent on Icons.

    Maybe I can find some that are relevent to the story now.

  • Not to add facts to the fire but.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by maggard ( 5579 ) <michael@michaelmaggard.com> on Wednesday September 05, 2001 @09:35AM (#2255131) Homepage Journal
    Coupla basic points: (easily discovered by anyone willing to invest the same time at a search engine as they did posting something foolish to /.)
    • MIT [mit.edu] is a private institution. Yes it gets money from public grants & programs, almost every accredited institution does. MIT is no more a public or government entity then the trade schools that advertise on late night TV. Furthermore even parts of the US Gov't doing public work can now claim IP on some of their products.
    • Yes MIT uses Graduate Students and no they don't generally earn much. On the other hand putting them to work probably does keep their tuition down a bit and heck, if you don't like it you can always go someplace else (courts rarely require X years attending MIT as part of a sentence and the campus is very open, one is free to leave it and not return at any time.) However this has nothing to do with the topic and just gets brought up every time a .edu issue is raised.
    • The US [washington.edu] HDTV [web-star.com] standards [atsc.org] happened after the FCC ran a competition in which four finalists emerged. Rather then a winner-take-all situation emerging (which would of taken years with the legal wrangling) a pooling of the "best" of a various technologies was brokered. As the patent & other IP issues around HDTV were spread out amongst several institutions and companies a pool was created held by the companies who now dubbed themselves "The Grand Alliance". Then as any other number of projects have done (DVD, Firewire, etc.) an examiner was brought in to determine exactly what IP was required then a formula was put in place to compensate the IP owners and everything got signed off on.
    • MIT earns some large sum of money every year from it's IP material, money which helps fund them. Sony [sony.com] does the same from it's own portfolio. In this case MIT's IP is used through the Grand Alliance agreement, something which Sony seems to have now decided to ignore. Whether or not you agree with all details of all IP in this case it seems rather strightforward and not to fall into any of the areas which so many folks find offensive.
    • Yes MIT (a US institution) can sue Sony (a company HQ'd in Japan.) Internationial trade has been going on since we first worked out nations and the laws are rather straightforward in cases like this. Did anyone other then a few sappy posters think that this was a new situation, that one couldn't sue an offshore entity?
    • MIT [mit.edu] is a private institution. Yes it gets money from public grants & programs, almost every accredited institution does

      Is MIT accredited? I checked with the accredidation board that was attempting to accredit University of Missouri-Columbia's comp engr dept and they only had accepted money from state schools and small private institutions. As far as I know, many MIT and Standford programs aren't officaly accredited. Of course I'm not implying that that is a problem, its just that accredication seems to be yet another money game. One of the early "get your degree via email" spamers started (and still owns) a major accredication agency.
      • I know that MIT's CS and EE programs have been accredited for a long time, and their half-and-half program got accredited about 6 years ago. So I believe their programs are generally accredited, although new programs probably don't get accredited until they've worked out all the details and had them around for a bit.

        Practically, it probably doesn't matter much, because MIT itself is so well known.
      • There are multiple different acredidation boards. The one that would do MIT is almost certainly different than the one that would do Missouri-Columbia. I know that the one that does Ripon College (where I grew up) is totally different than the one that does Carnegie Mellon (where I went to school).
      • I went throught the AACSB renewal process a couple of years ago as a visiting professor. Quite bluntly, their accreditation means nothing. It used to require certain levels of library, faculty education and activity, etc. Only about half of the schools qualified, so the other schools came up with a body to accredit themselves. Faced with a choice between standards and market share, the AACSB chose market share.


        I felt as if I was trapped in a bad Dilbert sequence on ISO 9000. I actually saw the answers coming. THeir focus now is on "outcome assessment." You can be as bad as you want, as long as you're measuring something.


        At this campus, I'm involved in the Bachelor of Science in Business (BSB) program. It is a separate program from the Smeal college on the main campus, as they had accreditation concerns. Now some of the faculty in this program are talking about accreditation, and I (and others) are opposed to even applying. The Penn State name means a lot more than AACSB. We would be foolish to make any changes to satisfy them; it would be a tradeoff of standards for nonsense.


        In fact, I don't want to stop at not applying; I want an official statement explaining the reason, and stating our willingness to joinin forming a body that accredits based on standards and quality rather than process.


        hawk, of course speaking for himself and neither the program or the university.

    • So are you saying that MIT holds patents on things that make it impossible to reimplement digital TV without breaking one of MIT's patents? See, I always thought that patents were not about limitting competition but protecting research funding, etc. Sony should be able to create some sort of digital TV implementation that does not infringe on MIT's patents. I would love to see more detailed information about exactly which patents and what hardware Sony is infringing with. Remember you are not supposed to be able to patent ideas, only products, and these types of bogus patents (like the one click amazon patent) don't really count in my book, and maybe in Sony's as well.
  • The MIT Media Lab did considerable work on digital TV back in the late 1980s, from whence this patent dates. But the Media Lab was a place where corporations could buy in and get rights to all the technology developed there. Sony was one of those corporations. So I'd have thought they'd have rights to those patents.
  • This topic reminded me of an article in this month's edition of Tech Review [techreview.com] about the impact of patents to university. They indeed can become a significant source of income and can be put back to more research, especially for private universities. There's a table [techreview.com] ranking universities based on their license income from patents. MIT is not surprising judging by the proportion of their license revenue compared to their research expenditure, which is only 2.2%. Compare this with Florida State University, whose license revenue is 43.2% of their research expenditure. It's basic economics.

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