News - Marvell fined $1.54 billion for wilfully infringing storage patents

[HEXUS]

Despite this news Marvell shares surge today, due to the removal of the uncertainty.

Read more.

[maverik-sg1]

It's going to hit them quite hard in the pocket this, seems to be such a trivial patent, not sure I ever saw Marvell using this technology as part of it's marketing plan - still if you break the rules, expect to pay the price.

[aidanjt]

and applying it to chips made and sold abroad.

What?! O.o

That's absolutely insane!

[HalloweenJack]

It's going to hit them quite hard in the pocket this, seems to be such a trivial patent, not sure I ever saw Marvell using this technology as part of it's marketing plan - still if you break the rules, expect to pay the price.

unless your apple - then you counter sue , 5 miles from your own HQ.....

[McEwin]

There is something a bit counter intuitive about holding patents and suing people that breach them. It's not exactly helping the advancement of mankind - just ensuring that if someone thinks you "invent" something you could get rich from it. Why not change the law (and please tell me if I've missed something here) so that you HAVE to pay a small pre-determined royalty if you use a patent. Therefore there is no litigation. Just, you sold 10million drives that used the tech, therefore you owe royalty*10million. End of story.

Oh, and stop granting patents for spurious things. Perhaps I've just undermined my own argument there!

[Jowsey]

There is something a bit counter intuitive about holding patents and suing people that breach them. It's not exactly helping the advancement of mankind - just ensuring that if someone thinks you "invent" something you could get rich from it. Why not change the law (and please tell me if I've missed something here) so that you HAVE to pay a small pre-determined royalty if you use a patent. Therefore there is no litigation. Just, you sold 10million drives that used the tech, therefore you owe royalty*10million. End of story.

Oh, and stop granting patents for spurious things. Perhaps I've just undermined my own argument there!

I think you just echo every reasonable person who DOESN'T work in Law specifically for suing over patent infringement.

Sadly the reason it won't work is because of economics. Two reasons. This is a REALLY big money game now. And when there is large amounts of money, people are interested in it and this has spawned a need (to defend or instigate). This in turn has generated jobs. The government will not change something so abruptly that you can clearly see the loss of jobs because of it.

The second reason is greed. If you have patent X. It cost you 1 million dollars to generate the knowledge and secure the patent. Company Y comes along and sell 1 million of product z for 100 dollars a product. If you put in a clause saying it's 1 dollar per product than the company with the patent has just broke even. However, if there is no pre-set royalty fee per product you could take the company for a hugely disproportionate amount of money. And that is profit to the company who owns the patent.

Sigh.

If only. People can feel free to disagree or add to my opinion

[devBunny]

Patent protection gives an innovator time to develop a decent product. If you patent something and intend to produce a product with it but get beaten to market by someone else who uses your patent then the royalties aren't going to be enough compensation for losing that market and the potential profits of their product.

[jim]

There is something a bit counter intuitive about holding patents and suing people that breach them. It's not exactly helping the advancement of mankind - just ensuring that if someone thinks you "invent" something you could get rich from it. Why not change the law (and please tell me if I've missed something here) so that you HAVE to pay a small pre-determined royalty if you use a patent. Therefore there is no litigation. Just, you sold 10million drives that used the tech, therefore you owe royalty*10million. End of story.

Oh, and stop granting patents for spurious things. Perhaps I've just undermined my own argument there!

Because it doesn't work. Let's say the pre-determined royalty is £1. So you invent the paperclip, and someone breaches the patent. You can now probably claim the GDP of the entire world. Another guy invents the space shuttle, and then NASA steal it. You can now claim about £10.

I appreciate that there's different levels of complexity in the two items and patents, but the point is to demonstrate that your idea is far too blunt an instrument.

[McEwin]

So keep my day job then!?

There are some solutions to some of the counter arguments. Like if it cost 1 million to develop - then set a higher royalty - something that should be considered by the patent office when determining a royalty fee. You retain the advantage that you own the patent and therefore have an advantage not having that particular cost. Okay, how do you stop people over-guestimating the actual cost so that's probably an issue there.

My feeling is this will stop "pointless" patenting like "swipe to unlock" and only patent things of meaningful value. Maybe that's too vague and okay, it is a blunt solution, but it just feels like everyone can benefit a bit rather than large corporations/lawyers being the only ones who can cash in. Hey-Ho it was a nice idea in my head.