Sony sued (again) for patent violation, injunction sought on PS3 sales

Oh boy, another patent lawsuit filed in that litigious folly called the Texas court system. This time, the suit pits Parallel Processing Corporation of Newport Beach, California against that legal whipping boy, Sony. PPC alleges that Sony's Cell processor -- the horsepower inside the PS3 -- violates a patent for "synchronized parallel processing with shared memory." Filed on July 26th, the five-page complaint by PPC states that Sony's actions are causing "irreparable harm and monetary damage" to the company and are therefore seeking the usual: compensation for damages (with interest) as well as the impounding and destruction of all Sony products infringing on the patent. Good times.

[Via gi]

[Dukejl @ Jul 31st 2007 5:42AM]

Fuck you patent trolls

[Evan @ Jul 31st 2007 6:21PM]

Ha ha, but just once wouldn't you like to see some crazy judge just say "ok" and actually order that all of these electronics be destroyed. It would be pandemonium!

[Kedow @ Jul 31st 2007 5:50AM]

Before everyone goes crazy with the "I'm going to patent air! or water!" effect, one should keep in mind that, when the author mentions " [...] violates a patent for synchronized parallel processing with shared memory." their patent merely deals with this subject and does not attempt to patent such a general subject.

The first thing you should do to understand the patent is to read its abstract. This will give you some context for what the patent is about. However, It is not uncommon to read the abstract of the Patent and assume it describes the entirety of the patent. While the abstract is important and gives the reader a general understanding of what the patent covers it does not necessarily define the breadth and scope of the patent. Only the claims themselves can define the actual scope of the patent.

Claim language can be turgid and difficult to understand and follow. This is because it is a form of "legalese". As you read the claim it is important to not interject your own assumptions or prejudices into your interpretation. Claim language is specific and has been carefully thought out by the inventor and the author and carefully reviewed and approved by a patent examiner. Each and every word in a claim has been specifically and carefully chosen To define the exact breadth and scope of that claim. This is why it is important to read a claim with no assumptions.

I wasn't necessarily commenting on the merits of this particular case, merely attempting to infuse some perspective into the arguement.

Many people, including bloggers themselves, are seriously misinformed when it comes to interpretation and validity of patents, this leaves the (usually incorrect) knee-jerk reactions to prevail in most comment boards. Now, I'm not denying there are frivolous suits (as with lawsuits brought in other areas, there are many), it's that it's common for people to now assume all patant suits are frivolous/destroying innovation.

[cduran01 @ Jul 31st 2007 8:26AM]

Just went through and read the entire patent and looked at that diagrams filed with the patent. They describe a text book implementation of a parallel processing system, an architecture that has been used by Cray, Sun Microsystems and IBM for years (even prior to this patent).

[Frankenstein Black @ Jul 31st 2007 12:33PM]

Yea, I read it and the conclusion is the same! Hey Parallel Processing Corporation of Newport Beach, California we hand to you a collective BITE ME/US! YOU FRAKING PATENT TROLLS!!

[Septimus @ Jul 31st 2007 6:04AM]

Another BS lawsuit. This could be attributed to a number of cpu/memory systems.

[Rees Clissold @ Jul 31st 2007 6:14AM]

With all the other patents Sony have infringed over the years, it wouldn't surprise me.

[Tom Boucher @ Jul 31st 2007 9:59AM]

While Sony maybe be a patent scofflaw, IBM and Toshiba who also developed the Cell with Sony are not.

I notice that they only sued Sony for the Cell, yet IBM and Toshiba also did the work on it.

I think someone didn't do their homework and thought they could get some free cash. If they sued all three of the makers of Cell I'd not be calling BS.

[SimbaDogg @ Jul 31st 2007 6:20AM]

Umm...why would they be going after sony...from what i remember the cell processor was chiefly designed by IBM and toshiba, and mostly bankrolled by sony. but anyways, as far as multi-core processors...any 100% familiar w/ how the cell differs in operation from the pentium d, core2duo, and amd athlons all running multiple cores?

[Karan @ Jul 31st 2007 6:25AM]

Sony's been paying out on patent lawsuits recently - I think the word has got around the patent troll cottage industry.

[Dude @ Jul 31st 2007 6:27AM]

The cell only contains one asymmetric core and in the case of the ps3 version 7 symmetric ones, basically the dual and quad cores from intel and amd each core can process any of the threads and any kind of data, symmetric processors are only able to process one kind of data at a time... they usually do it in groups of threads... but yeah... the cell is just really good at streaming floating point work, like physics and graphics type calculations...

at least thats how i understand it

[Juke Box Hero @ Jul 31st 2007 10:42AM]

Just to add to the "why would they be going after sony" question...

The Wii and Xbox360 both use the Cell processor as well (or at least some variant of). Are these patent trolls gonna go after Nintendo and Microsoft too?

[alexhrose71 @ Jul 31st 2007 12:57PM]

Jukebox : The Wii and 360 do not use any technology related to the Cell at all. The Wii does not contain any additional cores or SPUs. The 360 CPU consists of 3 GPU cores on one die, and is more closely related to the intel and AMD multi-core processors than the Cell which mates one GPU with multipled special-purpose GPUs.

The cell design allows you to add many more cores for less complexity and cost than the intel/amd/360 CPU design but is also hampered by the fact that an SPU is less versatile than a GPU.

[Juke Box Hero @ Jul 31st 2007 2:18PM]

Dang it! You are correct, the XBox uses a multi-core flavor the PowerPC CPU and the Wii uses the Broadway chip...both designed and produced by IBM, but alas not Cell procs...

That's the last time I trust an IBM sales person! Enterprise Briefing my @ss...

[me @ Aug 11th 2007 12:08PM]

i assume its because unlike toshiba and IBM sony have gone out and sold the cell processor under their own name.

[strider_mt2k @ Jul 31st 2007 7:04AM]

YEEEEEEEEEEE HAAAAAAAAA!

YippiTieoneon!

[Andir3.0 @ Jul 31st 2007 7:28AM]

But they don't use shared memory for processing. Each SPU has it's own memory space.

[Jeebus @ Jul 31st 2007 1:39PM]

If they don't share memory, how do they communicate? That's right, they do share memory, which doesn't mean that they don't have memory that is not shared.

[Andir3.0 @ Jul 31st 2007 3:00PM]

They communicate through the EIB

[PEZ @ Jul 31st 2007 7:52AM]

They are basically trying to patent the mathematical calculation of addition.

AHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHA! AHAHAHAHA!

[cduran01 @ Jul 31st 2007 8:25AM]

Parallel processing using shared memory is a computer science text book case, that may have been patentable back in '91 but now there are many more processors that operate on that concept. Im not familiar with the details of GPU's but dont all the latest GPU's from Nvidia and ATI operate as multiple cores with a shared video memory?

Since the cell processor was developed by 3 HUGE companies, Sony, Toshiba and IBM, PPC is up against all 3 even if they just singled out Sony in there lawsuit. The lawsuite is a few months short of expiration, this is just PPCs last ditch effort to cash in on there patent. Not to mention the award they seek involves the impounding and destruction of every product that infringes on the patent....thats obsurd, I dont know what court would grant that.

[johnny hates waiting @ Jul 31st 2007 12:56PM]

Kedow thanks for providing a seemingly balanced view. Although it certainly seems that many of tehse big corps get sued by vaporware patent trolls. What if this was a legitimate inventor/developer individual/company that is just being steamrolled by Sony?

[guilt+1 @ Jul 31st 2007 8:26AM]

you know it'd be really great if there was a link to the actual complaint. Perhaps one also to this Parallel Computing company, maybe include some background on the corporation. You fail to mention in this article that the patent dates back to 1991. Any chance of a link to the patent in question.

In short could Engadget actually review this post, realise it has absolutely no content whatsoever and then go and put the content in so we can have an informed discussion in the comments.

I can see the vast majority of people here have already made up their minds as to who they think is right but I'd like to make up my own mind based on facts.

[cduran01 @ Jul 31st 2007 8:31AM]

Here's a link to the patent:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=%22synchronized+parallel+processing+shared+memory%22&OS=%22synchronized+parallel+processing+shared+memory%22&RS=%22synchronized+parallel+processing+shared+memory%22

[Kamokazi @ Jul 31st 2007 9:06AM]

I really don't think an injunction on PS3 sales will change anything...Sony has pretty much done that themselves already...

[Silver R. Wolfe @ Jul 31st 2007 9:42AM]

Because selling 4.5 million consoles in half a year is doing absolutely horrific. /sarcasm

[borland502 @ Jul 31st 2007 10:24AM]

"Because selling 4.5 million consoles in half a year is doing absolutely horrific."

No, but the GP post was amusing. And Sony's marketing is pretty damn bad. I love my PS3, but I've cringed many a time over some statement or other that Sony made.

The fact that they've done a 180 on their message and tone is a tacit admission that they've screwed up their presentation. At least their product is solid; it's easier to repair an image with games than it is to correct faulty hardware.

[bigbrew @ Jul 31st 2007 10:38AM]

Only 1.5 million sold in the U.S. as of July 23, 2007. Compared to its competition I would consider this horrific.

[coplice @ Jul 31st 2007 10:21AM]

you think IBM will have to destroy the best supercomputer of the world too?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Roadrunner

[catonmyhead @ Jul 31st 2007 11:32AM]

It's not "the fastest supercomputer in the world". It's just the first in the top 500 fastest to use a linux based operating system.

[adr @ Jul 31st 2007 11:25AM]

The Patent was applied for by International Parallel Machines of New Bedford, MA. Most likely by a student at MIT. This isn't even the same company listed in the lawsuit. Of course the company listed in the lawsuit is in California, filing a suit in Texas. Sorry but it looks like it has Patent Troll written all over it. Suing companies is big business, in fact it could be seen as the biggest business in the USA. You produce nothing yet are able to generate billions of dollars in wealth to in the end produce nothing.

It doesn't say that the original patent was actually granted. It says it is a continuation of a previous filing that was rejected. It was filed in 1989 and surely by now almost any company that has made a parallel processing system would have violated this patent.

True multicore systems share the same cache so AMD's new designs would violate this patent as well. Intel just out two chips on one die so they weren't muticore but a dual CPU system on one socket.

Sony just showed weakness by capitulating on a few lawsuits and after the Immersion lawsuit was granted in favor of Immersion it meant that you stand a good chance at winning, so all the trolls are coming out.

Besides, who wants to bet that IBM holds a patent for parallel processing granted in the 50's or 60's that IPC violates.

[Loonie @ Jul 31st 2007 11:34AM]

Ohhh, I'm sure PPC would be positively raking in the billions if not for the irreparable harm and monetary damage being done to them. What multi-core processor architecture wouldn't fall under the realms of "synchronized parallel processing with shared memory"? Why aren't they being sued? And as someone previously said, why aren't the co-developers of cell being sued?

I hate siding with a corporate behemoth, but ... well, fuck off, PPC.

[John Commenter @ Jul 31st 2007 11:39AM]

1. The Abstract is (traditionally, and in 1991, although not so much now) there for the purpose of classifying the patent as prior art, not what the patent claims as its territory.

2. Bottom line #1 is the claims. In this patent the Summary is pretty informative too.

3. Bottom line #2 is the file history. Recent ones publicly available at the U.S. Patent Office's "PAIR" online http://portal.uspto.gov/external/portal/pair.

4. Not this one, too old (would have to be ordered from a service to view).

5. Looking up Dr. Chang (Princeton), this was a real product. By 1985 his company sold a $220K 9 processor machine called the IP-1, quote "The IP-1 has between 1 and 33 proprietary MOS technology CPUs which have access to a common memory through an interconnection switch. The combination of cross-bar switch and a multi-access memory (developed from work on the Goodyear Aerospace Staran system) avoids the bottleneck associated with bus-based systems." The company now makes PLCs.

6. Since the IP-1 was disclosed, and there was an interview in the case, my guess (just a guess without the file history) as to the reason this one was allowed as a patent would be "what is different from the IP-1". Knowing that, one could spculate about whether it was new and not obvious in 1988 (not 1991 - 1988 is the earliest filing date). Otherwise, pointless.

[Pete @ Jul 31st 2007 11:49AM]

Read the application and one major thing to say "PRIOR ART!" This really is a patent troll hoping to make some quick money. Not only that, why doesn't the suit name the other parties that would be co-conspirators in the cell chip design (IBM and Toshiba)? It it so laughable it almost makes you wonder if a competitor to the PS3 is somehow behind this suit (not naming names or anything) with how it directly targets it alone.

[jerrt @ Jul 31st 2007 11:55AM]

all the sales figures bickering aside, i'm reall glad to see some common sense being applied to this conversation. just about everything mentioned above should be mentioned by sony in the defensive arguments. this is seriously just a waste of sony's money, but they have to spend some to get this resolved. i just hope the first judge who this goes before see's the idiocy of what is going on.

[Jaygo333 @ Jul 31st 2007 10:25PM]

This company the way they are going will go bankrupt, seriously.
Remember earlier in the year or sometime last year when Sony claimed
or their fiscal report showedt that they were going bankrupt.

http://www.cashcrate.com/296513 < --- It's real and it works

[Ant @ Jul 31st 2007 1:15PM]

These are chancers, trying to cash in. I very much doubt that you would get this to court in any other part of the world with such a seemingley vague patent. "irreparable harm and monetary damage" to, who was it again 'Parallel Processing Corporation of Newport Beach', never heard of them. So this company is key player in the console industry then, they are loosing money hand-over-fist because their media console is not selling. Why are they loosing money again, I didn't think that Sony's Cell Procesor could be bought off-the-shelf, so the potential customers of 'Processing Corporation of Newport Beach' are going to Sony to get their processors, I don't think so. God these people are thick.

[ADR @ Jul 31st 2007 2:48PM]

Well after digging it turns out this patent was bought by none other than Acacia technologies. PPC is a fake corporation created by Acacia for the explicit purpose of holding the patent in order to sue Sony for the money.

Publication: Business Wire
Date: Thursday, May 3 2007
Subject: High technology industry

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- Acacia Research Corporation (Nasdaq:ACTG)(Nasdaq:CBMX) announced today that Acacia Patent Acquisition Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary that is part of the Acacia Technologies group, a leader in technology licensing, has acquired rights to a patent relating to parallel processors with shared memory.

SO if you didn't develop the technology but purchased the rights to the patent only to sue for damages to a corporation that doesn't really exist, you can sue a company that spent billions of dollars to actually create a product that was granted thousands of patents already for said product, brilliant!

Wow what a country. I wonder how much money Acacia will actually give back to Dr. Chang.

It looks like every company on Earth that makes anything electronic is in violation of one of Acacia's patents. You know what, I wouldn't care if they did have a team of brilliant scientists and engineers actually working on these things but they don't. They are just a patent aquisition company, they have not and will not ever actually make a product.

They have already forced Sony and Fujitsu to pay them money for connecting devices to laptops. On thier wesite they tout thier mutil million dollar enforcement settlements. The current big fish they are trying to get settlements on is the transmission of of ditial audio and video over any medium. They even trademarked the technology. Yep cable, internet, sattelite. I fact you would violate thier patent if you send a home movie to a freind by e-mail.

Thats pretty much saying you have a patent for running water. Some things just aren't patentable and thats the way it was meant to be.

[eddy_88_nite @ Jul 31st 2007 3:41PM]

why is it that its always sony that gets sued. I mean c'mon its not even that big of a deal.

[ark_v2 @ Jul 31st 2007 5:33PM]

For all the people bashing sony (and for PPC too), do you even know how the CELL works?

[pixelsword @ Aug 10th 2007 10:24AM]

...the technology in question was already brought to a patent review board and was given the green light.

This is just a money-grab and they're targeting Sony (instead of IBM and/or Toshiba) because Sony is the most likely to settle to avoid litigation, which in turn would open the floodgates to IBM and Toshiba. If I was Sony, I'd recommend that they get the other two involved, which would lessen the financial burdern and would bankrupt the "company" (a gaggle of lawyers...read the links)

Read this

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070731-15-year-old-parallel-processing-patent-threatens-sony-ps3.html

this

http://www.patentmonkey.com/PM/IMTBlog/tabid/63/Default.aspx

This

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/48226

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_long_does_a_patent_last

http://inventors.about.com/od/inventing101patents/f/protection_last.htm

http://www.againstmonopoly.org/index.php?limit=10&chunk=0&author=2

Just interesting aspects into the case

Sony has a good chance of winning, because of the review board process.

[the_easy_way_out @ Aug 13th 2007 2:52PM]

its easier and cheaper to higher a lawyer than to actually make the product and market it