Intel Countersues Transmeta

An anonymous reader writes "After being sued by Transmeta for patent infringement last year, the fangs are out at Intel. In a suit filed in Delaware, Intel claims Transmeta has infringed on 7 of its patents. The whole saga revolves around chips designed to be energy efficient."

and the usefulness of the patent system...

[3seas]

... starts to crumble as far as its ability to bring the bestest and most advancedist products to the coinsumer.

Classic patent-plateau

[steinnes]

A couple of years ago I saw Stallman lecture about the dangers of software patents. A lot of his speech revolved around the busting of the myth of the "patent empowering the little guy", ie. the myth of the lone inventor walking down the street demanding money from the likes of Intel, IBM, Microsoft, because of his mighty patent. Stallman explained that if such a situation would arise, the large companies would simply find ways of countersuing for infringement of some of their numerous patents, thus forcing the smaller entity to give up it's claims, and possibly settle the countercase by giving up it's own patent.

This is something he referred to as a patent plateau -- where the large companies are all so far beyond the reach of smaller entities, be it individuals or companies, that patents in the hands of those not "on the plateau", are practically useless.

Re:Classic patent-plateau

[broller]

One has to ask the question: if Transmeta had not sued Intel, would Intel have sued Transmeta

Thank you for not using "begs the question" here.

It seems likely that the answer is no. Transmeta was not a threat to Intel, so they had no pressing reason to sue. If Intel did decide to sue, and won, the bad publicity would far outweigh anything they could win in court. If Intel lost, the publicity would be worse, and they'd set a bad precedent for the other "little guys" out there. Transmeta forced the hands of Intel.

You *can* sue the big guys for patent violations

[Per Abrahamsen]

But only if you don't have a product of your own.

The patent system can serve two groups:

1) The big companies, who can keep newcomers out.
2) Litigation companies, with no purpose other than suing.

It can not serve the little guy with an innovative products, as all products build on older ideas, and the lifetime of a patent is much longer than the generation gab between products.

If you have a great patentable idea, and want to make money on it, here is what you must do: Patent it. Distribute it widey, for example, if applicable, as source code under a BSD/MIT style license. Watch others build products on it. Sue them. Never, ever, make the mistake of creating a product of your own. The time where you could get rich by identifying a need, and selling a product to fulfill it, is long gone.

The Litigation Tactic

[wjcofkc]

The laywers at Transmeta must surely have seen how the SCO battle recently ended. It's remarkable that they haven't taken that as lesson learned for them by someone else.

This tactic of trying to make a bunch of money via litigation before tanking a failed company is so uncertain - and with such a potential for backfire - I can't image why anyone would go that route.

If they wanted to make money before closing up shop, they should have sold thier patents.

-W

Transmeta is today's Netscape

[transami]

You people floor me. You mash all day long about how poor the patent system is, and then when someone tries to uphold legitimate patents you label them money-grubbing losers. Doesn't anyone remember what happened? Transmeta comes along with a revolutionary new perspective and implementation of teh CPU based on the idea of power efficiency and the big wig Intel just cuts them out of the picture by copying them. Now, power efficiency is the new "MHz" and the company we have to thank for it is being kicked about and compared to scoundrels like SCO. This has all the same characteristics of Netscape vs. Microsoft, but we can see by the results of that case people really care about.

It makes me sick.