Firm Seeks To Ban Mobile Companies' Imports To US 137
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by
Soulskill
from the even-silly-patent-claims-are-bigger-in-texas dept.
from the even-silly-patent-claims-are-bigger-in-texas dept.
snydeq writes "Texas-based Saxon Innovations has filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission to bar six companies — including Research in Motion, Palm, and Nokia — from importing handheld devices into the US. At issue are three patents that Saxon purchased in July 2007; a patent for keypad monitor with keypad activity-based activation; a patent for an apparatus and method for disabling interrupt marks in processors or the like; and a patent for a device and method for interprocessor communication by using mailboxes owned by processor devices. Saxon, with five employees, purchased about 180 US patents formerly owned by Advanced Micro Devices or Legerity in 2007, according to its ITC complaint."
Litigation is expensive (Score:5, Informative)
...but filing ITC complaints is cheap.
The whole point here is that enforcing these patents against all of those companies is an expensive proposition with no guarantee of returns. However, they can get Free Money by extorting those companies to pay them royalties, backed up by the threat of an import ban from the ITC, and even if their complaint is rejected, they've spent practically nothing.
Are you on crack? (Score:1, Informative)
What ARE you talking about? Who could forget the WWI flying ace who played Commodore Schmidlapp on Batman? [wikipedia.org]
I guess it's clear why AMD sold them... (Score:5, Informative)
...because they're crap. I looked at the first patent and the first few claims looked suspiciously like the (certainly not novel) idea of connecting up a keyboard matrix in such a way that pressing a key triggers an interrupt on the row lines, which triggers a wake-up event and a keyboard scan. I couldn't tell about the later claims. Then I looked at the interrupt mask patent
You've got to be kidding me. AMD patented a common interrupt mask circuit... in 1994? Apparently it isn't only with respect to software that the patent office is out of touch.
Re:Litigation is expensive (Score:2, Informative)
Well, since one of the things the complainant has to prove in the ITC is that they have a domestic industry practicing the asserted claims, yes, we can.
Patent trolling companies cover this by purchasing common stock in a company that practices whatever idea they are suing over. Stock represents equity which represents ownership of said 'domestic industry'. It's messy, but it works.
Re:Litigation is expensive (Score:5, Informative)
You must mean Sosumi. [wikipedia.org]
Domestic Industry? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Litigation is expensive (Score:3, Informative)
One Guess Why Saxon is based in Tyler, TX (Score:4, Informative)
U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, ding ding ding
I'm from Texas and I think every judge in that district should be removed.
Re:Litigation is expensive (Score:4, Informative)
The iPhone doesn't have a keyboard because Steve Jobs hates buttons.