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Patents Your Rights Online

Dutch Firm Says Dell Motherboards Violate Its Patent 38

Posted by timothy from the professional-stunt-lawyers-on-closed-track dept.
Call Me Black Cloud writes "This article (also here) briefly discusses a suit against Dell for royalties on US patent 5,594,621. This patent, titled "Motherboard for a computer of the AT type, and a computer of the AT type comprising such motherboard", concerns the layout of ISA and PCI cards on a motherboard. Tulip Computers International somehow managed to convince the USPTO that its arrangement of cards on a mobo was worthy of a patent. Fearing the orderly arrangement of my sock drawer was infringing on a patent, I was relieved to discover only a patent for a magnetic sock holder, which solves the "well known problem associated with everyday laundering...the disarray that can occur with paired items of clothing such as socks"
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Dutch Firm Says Dell Motherboards Violate Its Patent More

Dutch Firm Says Dell Motherboards Violate Its Patent

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  • Well.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by zulux ( 112259 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @12:52AM (#6281480) Homepage Journal
    Dutch Firm Says Dell Motherboards Violate Its Patent

    We'll ae least The Firm Dutch Are't Patently Violating Dell's Mother.

  • The Dutch? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @12:54AM (#6281488)
    If there're two things I hate, they're people who are intolerant of other people's cultures, and the Dutch.
  • Isn't this the Patent [ebay.com.au] that was sold on ebay a few years back?

  • Not even cnet... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by OneBarG ( 640139 )
    ...can do a story without mentioning SCO?
    SCO Group has claimed that IBM and other companies owe it billions in damages for allegedly lifting some of its proprietary Unix intellectual property and incorporating it into Linux.
    No wonder it's infested virtually every /. posting.

  • Magnetic sock holder? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @01:09AM (#6281569)
    My socks have no problem sticking together ... or to the floor, the wall, or the side of the laundry bin.

  • AT ? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    is dell still selling AT computers ? I thought we all switched to ATX long time ago...
  • Dell should do some shady backroom deals and convince HP to sue them for trademark violation by using the word "Tulip" in connection with computers.
  • And trust me, the layout isn't that much more efficient!
  • So Dell tiptoed ... through Tulip's ... AT?

  • Irrelevant but.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by floydman ( 179924 ) <floydman@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @02:31AM (#6281933)
    Did any body count the number of patent issues listed on /. today. :

    1) The one you are reading

    2) SCO vs Linux (ofcorse, this is the daily speical)

    3) Chip Firm Hit By 45-Year-Old Patent

    4) Nextel Claims Trademarks On "Push To Talk" and "PTT"

    And yet more to come through the day..

    What is this world comming to, is the whole planet gonna be owned by a bunch of people? I think this is something we should be aware of, you cannot work on a single project now (even for your own pleasure), without VIOLATING one of the patents without you ever noticing.. THIS IS A SERIOUS PROBLEM...

    • Re:Irrelevant but.. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pla ( 258480 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @03:56AM (#6282250) Journal
      What is this world comming to, is the whole planet gonna be owned by a bunch of people?

      The world itself already does have everything allocated to some "owner". Just try to go out and find something you can legally just claim. Hell, even try to visit the North Pole, supposedly not owned by any country, yet "restricted" from any visitors (by whom, one may well ask?). Let me know if you make it within even half a degree without a representative of some military (of a government which clearly has no jurisdiction there, by international treaty) ventilating your corpse.

      The problem at hand deals with something far more insidious than mere physical ownership - Namely, someone may already "own" your very thoughts and ideas.

      You don't even need to have signed them away (ie, to your employer), or ever have heard of the "owned" idea or anything related to it. Your parents may have raised you in complete isolation on an island in the South Pacific, yet if you have a particular idea and try to make use of it, someone can sue you into oblivion for that idea.

      Life sucks, eh? Well, get ready for it to suck even more, since apparently the sheeple of Earth haven't yet suffered enough at the hands of their Corporate Masters to revolt. 100 hour work weeks won't do it, as long as people can eat. Lack of even appreciation or a heart-felt "thanks" for people literally sacrificing their bodies and souls to their Corporate Masters won't do it. Not until it all comes crashing down, until we realize that we can't "eat" a litigation/service economy, will people insist on change.

      But eventually, they will. And "pretty" will not describe the situation.

      And if you think I overdramatize the situation, how many unpaid hours did you work last week? Assuming, of course, you had the "luxury" of working, not having recently found your supposedly "unneeded" position curiously occupied by two H1B's or "interns" for a total of 2/3rds of your former salary.

      Livin' the American dream. Can I wake up, now? Please?
      • well my pal, i am sorry to tell you that i am not an American, in fact am an Egyptian, where the description you are detailing up there, is like a joke here in Egypt. The situation here is much worse...Just trust me on it...;)But what i am saying is this:
        For the sake of humanity to prosper, we should be using each others ideas, "The American Dream" you call it made up capitalism, and it went all the way to patent even freaking THOUGHTS .. i mean shit, now i cant even think of eating a pizza without wo
        • I would be very interested in knowing what Egypt is like. My direct experience is limited to America, Spain, Portugal, France, Poland and Lithuania -- but more information is better.

          Please do tell about how the situation is worse.

          • Egypt (Score:1)

            by Uriel ( 16311 )
            I'm not from Egypt, but here's what I see: Sand, dictators, unhappy people.

            They do have the Aswan High Dam, which was a amazing engineering project. It provides an immense amount of electricity...and it's huge. Many people say Egypt's glory is in the past, but that was pretty remarkable.

      • Re:Irrelevant but.. (Score:2, Flamebait)

        by chthon ( 580889 )

        I have a certain pessimistic feeling (or hope ?) that somehow, somewhere a new like French revolution will break out, in which all coroporate leaders will be beheaded or shot, irrelevant if they where good or bad.

      • The world itself already does have everything allocated to some "owner". Just try to go out and find something you can legally just claim.

        It's hardly surprising that there is no longer much lying around to be claimed. But isn't the issue not so much a lack of unclaimed resources as an inappropriate extension of the concept of ownership?

        • Re:Irrelevant but.. (Score:1, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          These developments are actually a long term good. Despite the fact that patent office abuses are extreme and difficult, IT NEEDS TO GET WORSE BEFORE IT GETS BETTER! Until people think about patent abuse they same way as tort reform (eg, ridiculous exagerated ludricrious nonsense - think $45 million for spilt coffee) will what needs to happen happens - an immediate end to patent office and the emergence of a new system that recognizes that physical devices - NOT METHODS - are patentable - and only when the
      • Hence why I want to go out into the middle of the pacific ocean and start my own floating country! I'll just be a couple thousand football (american) field sized barges all linked together. I'll use solar power to power the whole thing, it'll be great!

  • HP were using a riser card in '97.. (Score:4, Informative)

    by jantheman ( 113125 ) on Tuesday June 24, 2003 @04:57AM (#6282409)
    ..in their Pavilion 32xx desktops.

    I wonder if Tulip knew that?

    (but I can't be arsed to go in the attic, dig the dead box out & see if there's a (c)Tulip on the mobo).
    • I was going to make the same comment, except that I was going to refer to the entire Vectra line of systems (never used or worked on a Pavilon..)

      This is just another shining example of the utter stupidity of the USPTO.

      Makes me wonder if they're using trained monkeys to grant patents.

    • Guess you didn't read the patent. Tulip filed this one on June 13, 1995 to the USPTOb and almost 1 year earlier in the Netherlands (Jun 14, 1994).

    • I know, I'm a chump for ever having owned one, but I had a 386sx/16 box from packard bell bought in 1990. it had a riser card in it.

      before that, I worked with Zeniths that had essentially the same thing, except the "mobo" was vertical and the "riser" was horizontal (unless you turned the box on it's side (oldschool tower))

      (I was overseas at the time and Gateway, then still a company worth buying from, didn't ship to APO addresses)

      this, by 1 year, predates the earliest referenced patent in the claims sec
      • I know, I'm a chump for ever having owned one, but I had a 386sx/16 box from packard bell bought in 1990. it had a riser card in it.

        Yep. But the riser card (IIRC), was in the MIDDLE of the case, to the left (with the front facing you) of the power supply. This put the top of the ISA/PCI cards towards the LEFT of the case.

        From what I can see, the patent covers a riser card on the FAR LEFT of the case, with top of the cards closer to the right of the case.

        So you see it's completely different :P

  • I'm sorry, there's bullshit patents, and then there are bullshit patents. I read the patent, it's a sad commentary on the current state of affairs.
  • How much more of this will you Americans put up with before you get off your lasy asses and change the system? It's your government - DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
  • didn't ben franklin say something like "a patent is an invitation to a lawsuit" and that was in the 1800's before things got AFU.

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