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back to article Ethernet patents claim smacked down by US judge

Ethernet Innovations' sue-the-world strategy is beginning to unravel, with a California judge invalidating two of its patents and ruling that another two, on which it had based its lawsuits, hadn't been infringed. Companies who had decided to settle might be wishing they'd resisted, with Acer, Dell, HP and a bunch of other …

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  1. Mark 85

    The sub-head is a tad misleading...

    If one looks at the patents, they aren't for the "blue cable with springy plastic toggles". I read and wondered if someone patented the blue cable. Maybe the connectors could have been....

    All that aside, well done to the courts for smacking another patent troll. Although, I guess if they had filed in Texas, they might have won.

    6 0 Reply
    1. Peter Simpson 1
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      Re: The sub-head is a tad misleading...

      If the connectors were patented, it was by Western Electric...they were designed by and for The Phone Company (aka, the late, lamented Ma Bell).

      2 0 Reply
  2. arober11

    Judge invalidates two expired patents??? (July 1992 + 20 yrs = July 2012)

    Unless I'm missing something, a US patent lasts no more than 20 years, and these four all have a priority date of July 1992. So why would a Judge need to invalidate two expire patents???

    5 0 Reply
    1. Message From A Self-Destructing Turnip
      Reply Icon

      Re: Judge invalidates two expired patents??? (July 1992 + 20 yrs = July 2012)

      Perhaps it was claimed that the patents were infringed prior to the expiry date?

      3 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Blowhard
        Reply Icon

        Re: Judge invalidates two expired patents??? (July 1992 + 20 yrs = July 2012)

        "Perhaps it was claimed that the patents were infringed prior to the expiry date?"

        Don't try to confuse us with your fancy "arithmetic"; burn the patent heretics!

        6 0 Reply
    2. david 12 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Judge invalidates two expired patents??? (July 1992 + 20 yrs = July 2012)

      1992 would be prior to the 1995 fix to the American Patent system, so it would be 17 years from the issue date. Technically, it is possible that the patent wasn't issued until much later (1998 plus?): such patents were called "submarine" patents, because you didn't know the technology was patented until you were torpedoed years later.

      No idea if that applied at all here.

      2 0 Reply
  3. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    Pithy to the point of pointlessness

    Come on Richard, can we have some more details please - this isn't the weather report. What were the claims and what's the history to this case? Sure, I could go and read through the patents myself but that's not going to give me any background to why anyone thought that this case might have had legs.

    8 0 Reply
    1. wdmot
      Reply Icon

      Re: Pithy to the point of pointlessness

      And which two of the four were invalidated?

      3 0 Reply
  4. JeffyPoooh
    Pint

    Defendants can recover costs...

    That's interesting.

    2 0 Reply
  5. eldakka

    The coverage of this seems pretty dismal in general, I had to read the full ruling (http://ia600503.us.archive.org/4/items/gov.uscourts.cand.231088/gov.uscourts.cand.231088.1289.0.pdf) to find the invalidated patents:

    "Accordingly, the Court grants Defendants’ motion for summary

    adjudication that SONIC anticipates the asserted claims of the

    ‘872 and ‘094 patents. "

    1 0 Reply
    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      In case anyone else is reading this late:

      - The invalidated '094 and '872 patents appear to be for a transmit buffer that automatically starts transmitting when the buffer reaches a trigger level, and the trigger level can be set programmatically.

      - '459 is buffering to reduce the send-complete interrupt load from the NIC.

      - '313 is a general patent for buffering on the NIC.

      SONIC was a National Semiconductor chipset for EISA bus-master Ethernet NICs, apparently.

      4 0 Reply

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