SGI Sues ATI for Patent Infringement

Ynsats writes "The Register is reporting that SGI is filing suit against ATI for patent infringement. The suit alleges that ATI violated patent number 6,650,327, "Display system having floating point rasterization and floating point framebuffering", which was filed in 1998 and granted in 2003, in its Radeon graphics cards. This is coming fast on the heels of AMD's announcement of the intention to buy ATI for $4.2B and it doesn't seem to be swaying AMD's intentions. AMD hopes to finish the takeover by the end of this year. SGI has also issued an ominous statement stating that they have plenty of intellectual property left and there will be more litigation to come."

Reminds me of another three letter 'S' company

[Ryu2 (89645)]

If you can't beat them, sue them...

Re:Reminds me of another three letter 'S' company

[jcr (53032)]

The difference here is that SGI really did invent a lot of things, and their patents are probably valid.

-jcr

Re:Reminds me of another three letter 'S' company

[AndrewRUK (543993)]

And what, exactly, is creating something original, if not being "the first one to get there"?

Re:Reminds me of another three letter 'S' company

[by Anonymous Coward]

I think the parent was trying to restate, in layman's terms, the patent stipulation that an idea is patentable only if it is non-obvious to someone skilled in the trade. If the idea is very simple, but that company was just the first one to think, "Hey, we can patent this", then it is pretty lame. At least, that's how I read it after a few mental contortions. :-)

Re:Reminds me of another three letter 'S' company

[swthomas55 (904301)]

Alexander Graham Bell was 4 hours ahead of a rival inventor filing the patent on his telephone. Being first is all, in this race. (From Wikipedia: Bell then secured his own patent in 1876, just hours before Elisha Gray visited the patent office for his own work on the telephone.)

The Wikipedia article also tells the story of Antonio Meucci, who apparently invented the telephone several years earlier but was too poor to take out a patent. Seems things really weren't all that different 130 years ago.

Re:Reminds me of another three letter 'S' company

[daeg (828071)]

By not enforcing the patents earlier, yes, SGI should forfeit their right to pursue violators in the legal system. You can't just sit back and wait for a company to turn profitable and be on the verge of a $4.2B takeover before suing them.

"Hey! They have money now! GET THEM!"

Re:Reminds me of another three letter 'S' company

[jank1887 (815982)]

so... the patent was only granted in 2003. It's now 2006. I would tend to give them the benefit of the doubt that 3 years is about the right amount of time to investigate (reverse engineer, if need be) whether a rival's technology is infringing, attempt to secure a licensing agreement, and then, after that, file infringement suits. On a 17 year patent, 3 years is young. It's not like they filed on some vague idea 14 years ago that wasn't even implementable then, and now that something looks close enough to what they cooked up back then they start suing. THAT would be troll-ish.

Re:Reminds me of another three letter 'S' company

[Changer2002 (577488)]

Not having read the patent, I can't comment on this particular one, but one thing /.'ers love to do is point out how obvious patents are based on their titles. Being a lawyer and working with patents all day let me just state that the title of a patent often doesn't spell out what the inventive step is. It's just a general topic and area, and in a crowded area sometimes the titles are pretty generic. Usually you have to really get into the patent to find out what the innovation is (if it's there). So before you declare a patent obvious take a look at it, not just it's title.

welcome back SGI

[hlimethe3rd (879459)]

So SGI has been reborn as a patent troll? Welcome to the party.

Re:welcome back SGI

[timeOday (582209)]

It seems fair that SGI, who was very big in the game not that long ago and can no longer compete, should be able to collect dues for their patented ideas.

If only you had said "legal" instead of "fair."

SGI did have their heyday. They had many good innovations, and at the time they also made a lot of money on those innovations for their employees and investors. That's all teriffic.

But now that it's over, what good will be had by forcing us to pay an "SGI Tax" on anything to do with graphics for the next N years?

Re:welcome back SGI

[mikael (484)]

The patent is mentioned in the OpenGL extension specifications color_buffer_float.txt [sgi.com]

SGI owns US Patent #6,650,327, issued November 18, 2003. SGI
        believes this patent contains necessary IP for graphics systems
        implementing floating point (FP) rasterization and FP framebuffer
        capabilities.

SGI's patent was filed June 16, 1998, and granted November 18, 2003

ATI did similar work at the same time ATI_pixel_format_float [sgi.com]

The development history of ATI's document ranges from 9th June 2002 to 4th December 2002

Basically, ATI gets caught between SGI filing for a patent, and SGI having the patent granted. Although, given that SGI have been announcing the status of this patent for the past three years, it does seem odd that they are only sueing now. Maybe they are scared of the ATI/AMD merger, or see that ATI has more money now.

Re:welcome back SGI

[fistfullast33l (819270)]

Good catch on that. Not many people will pay attention. I bet it took them 3 years to file the lawsuit because law moves slower than technology, and they had to take time to build a claim. I'd like to give SGI the benefit of the doubt here and say they're not a patent troll. You don't just file a lawsuit and hope for the best. As a business you need to make sure that your decision can be backed up (otherwise you become SCOX). Of course, I bet the bankruptcy had a lot to do both with the decision to file and the delay in filing. Plus, we don't know if SGI approached ATI before this and offered a deal over litigation.

Re:welcome back SGI

[cgenman (325138)]

A once great company behaving like a patent troll is still a patent troll.

A patent is intended to be a device to protect non-obvious research and innovation from being stolen so that you can reap the rewards in your product line. In this case, the research was not stolen, as ATI thought of it too. And SGI no longer has a product line to protect.

They're suing ATI because they have no way left to make money. Period. They're not protecting their own product line or income stream, as they have neither. They're not even protecting their own research, as ATI developed this independently. They're just in their death throes, and are suing.

Remember, patent mutually assured destruction doesn't work if one company no longer has a product line to destroy. Dying companies have a habit of taking others with them.

And so it begins...

[gfxguy (98788)]

The SCO-iffying of sgi. I used to love SGI. I still love their old hardware, from Indys to Reality Engines, from the 4D85 I started on (before they gave fancy names) to the Onyx Infinite Reality that we ran virtual sets on in real time long before PCs could even think about doing this stuff, and the sgi's ran a lot of our live TV well into the PC era, doing a better job than PCs could years after the sgis were released.

But now it's over and sgi has become an office with a few lawyers, and this is what the call emerging from bankrupcy.

Not the first time

[tjkslashdot (809901)]

Anyone else remember they gave NVidia the same treatment [findarticles.com] back in the heady day's of '98? This is nothing new for SGI. "Rattle the cage, and try to stave off the end with another lawsuit." How did that last one work for SGI? Not so well....

the real culprit: clueless legislators

[theStorminMormon (883615)]

When I read about stuff like this, it makes me annoyed. Not because any sense of fairness or ethics (companies don't have morals), but because of the wasted resources. Litigation is money spent without any production at the end. You pay a bunch of bloodsuckers to fight another bunch of bloodsuckers and either you take money from the other guy or the other guy takes money from you, but the only people guaranteed to get paid are the bloodsuckers.

Imagine if the money spent on spurious litigation went into actual R&D, capital investment for fabrication centers, engineer salaries, hell even advertising. Anything but litigation!

But as long as there's an avenue to make money this way, you can't really expect companies like SGI to behave any differently. You're providing a way for companies that are no long profitable (either because they have no product, e.g. SGI, or because they have an antiquate business model e.g. **AA) to leech off of the market instead of exiting it. Of course they're going to try to survive and not just go quietly into that good night. So, while I'm annoyed at this behavior, you have to realize that it's intellectual property laws that are the problem. We need fewer and simpler IP laws. Of course, trying to get lawmakers to pass fewer laws is like asking a competitive eater to "take it slow", and that's not even mentioning that the bloodsuckers aren't going to be happy to see yet another cash cow disappear anytime soon.

How long will it take for public outrage to really grow until real reform is made?

-stormin

Just proves the old adage....

[Darth_brooks (180756)]

"Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue."

A sad day...

[FellowConspirator (882908)]

SGI is late to the table to become a patent troll. If there's any lesson to be learned in the past 5 years in the tech world it's that a business plan built around litigation is no plan at all (unless you are a law firm, then you're basically printing your own money).

It's a shame too, SGI was a great company with some very good products too.

However, I would point out that it's not unexpected. One of the reasons that vendors of video cards don't provide hardware programming specs or open source drivers for their products has been for fear of litigation. It's been a prevalent rumor for years that many vendors feel that their products potentially run afoul of a bunch of patents and that's why they are so cagey with letting people understand how to program for their products and to get the best performance out of them. If SGI wins in this suit, expect a horrible blood-letting in the graphics adapter business and prices for premium technology to go up across the board.

Classic case of innovator's dilemma?

[defile (1059)]

SGI is the market leader in high performance graphics.

Someone makes cool 3d video game with a VGA.

SGI laughs, continues selling workstations for $10k.

Someone releases a commodity 3d graphics card.

SGI laughs, continues selling workstations for $10k.

Someone releases a fast commodity 3d graphics card.

SGI laughs, but to placate the market, throws half-hearted PC graphics effort over the wall (Fahrenheit, x86 workstations, etc.) Effort is severely overpriced due to SGI's existing value network/cost structures. No one buys it.

SGI thinks little of it, decides to let the commodity vendors have their razor thin margins, they're doing them a favor by leaving all of the fat deals to them, right?

Commodity 3d graphics vendor offers lucrative deal to SGI top talent.

SGI top talent, looking for new and exciting and more money jump ship.

SGI, instead of getting the message, continues to focus on moving up-market and ignoring commodity markets.

Commodity graphics grows into a dozens of billions of dollar market.

SGI participates in none of it. Dies instead.

Clap. Clap. Clap.

Re:Classic case of innovator's dilemma?

[SirKron (112214)]

Delete:

• SGI participates in none of it. Dies instead.

Insert:

• AMD gobbles up SGI too as the company is cheaper than the future cost of attorney fees to defend against the patent claims.
• Intel, NVIDIA shit themselves as their graphics cards also infringe the patents.
• Lawsuit proceeds pays for SGI acquisition and more.

Zombie companies

[aero6dof (415422)]

SGI is back from the dead and is now trying to feast on living companies. If that doesn't fit the halloween season I don't know what does.

Re:Huh?

[ThosLives (686517)]

The problem is that this patent fails the obviousness test about 100%. The patent itself, if you follow the link, says that "People have used floating point before, just in emulation because hardware cost too much. Now that hardware is cheap, we just do floating point rasterization from the framebuffer instead of through emulation."

I don't understand how the USPTO granted a patent that says "This method has been known for some time, but now we just have the capability to do it."

I'm all for granting legitimate patents (they do actually exist) but this one does not pass the sanity check.

SGI's income went to research

[nadanumber (992974)]

SGI always poured the lions share of its income into research, and to the best of my knowledge they, even now, continue to do so.

SGI is the company that today has the very fastest Linux computer - the Altix shared memory multiprocessing family - available at any price, really a technological marvel because it runs a single OS kernel and has memory architecture which is truly phenomenal - it scales better than any other multiprocessing/clustering solution.

So any defense of their patents, however 'unpopular' with the video gaming set, should be welcomed because it could help a company that we really owe a lot to in many ways get back into the game. Honestly.

They would not be a 'patent troll'. Don't forget, SGI open sources a LOT of its technology. Much more than most other hardware vendors. Much more.

I used to work at NASA and our division was largely an SGI shop, and yes, they were expensive, but at the time, there was nothing else out there that was comparable in ANY way. You won't ever find me saying anything bad about SGI except maybe that it would be great if they were cheaper.

Why? Because they are the best.

Re:Huh?

[jcr (53032)]

The problem is that this patent fails the obviousness test about 100%.

If it's so obvious, why didn't you do it first?

Implementing floating-point framebuffers is non-trivial problem, and SGIs solutions to doing so are why they deserved the patent.

-jcr

Re:The solution is easy

[Dachannien (617929)]

If AMD can buy ATI for $4.2B, can't they simply add a few bucks to buy SGI too?

Why else would SGI be doing this? Eventually, either they'll sue the right deep pockets and get bought out, or another company will take a look at their growing list of pending lawsuits and decide they want in on that action. At least, that's the plan.