Comment by ohazi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ohazi | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This line appears to suggest otherwise.

> Dynamic ram? Can I poke fun at them for not knowing what RAM is? Yes I can.

He's trying to nitpick about the term "dynamic" in this context, which he has misunderstood to mean "dynamic allocation" (i.e. the alternative to "static allocation"). The phrase "static or dynamic RAM" is basically never used to refer to memory allocation, it refers to the physical construction of the memory. This is especially true if the paragraph is next to a block diagram that includes an ALU... They are five levels removed from any sort of allocator.

The rest of the paragraph doesn't describe a memory allocator, it's describing runtime reconfiguration of a circuit, which you can do (and often do do) using a statically allocated configuration block or even a hard-wired dedicated memory. Again, nothing to do with malloc.

Whether a configuration memory is SRAM or DRAM based is immaterial, but patent language likes to make a point of enumerating the possibilities.

I read that line as poking fun of the fact that RAM is not capitalized because the lawyers that wrote this think "ram" is a word, not an acronym

Eh, shrug. I don't think so.

In any case, the fact that SparkFun doesn't even do semiconductor design makes this whole lawsuit even more ridiculous. They put chips onto boards, they don't design ALUs with special configurable control bits!

It actually doesn't matter if SparkFun designs chips. They do buy them, and re-sell them in devices. Patent law continues to apply to all downstream implementations of a product, until the claim is "exhausted" by a license. So, if the maker of the SoC doesn't have a license from this troll, then the troll is free to sue all of their customers, and in turn their customers, all the way down until someone pays up.

It's a bit absurd to imagine, but if someone has a patent on a CPU design, which is then used in a radio, which is installed in a car, which is driven by a taxi driver, then the patent holder can in principle sue the taxi driver for using their radio without licensing the patent.

In practice, patent trolls will figure out who they can sue who is big enough to extract $$, but not so big as to run the risk of them fighting back and invalidating the patent.

Yeah I know that this is how it works, I just think it happens to be the worst possible way for it to work. If anything, pointing to the upstream manufacturer should be the end of it.

The fact that someone can sue me over some proprietary implementation of something buried inside a chip I bought where the only way to defend myself is for me to go chase down NXP or ARM is indeed absurd.

I know nothing about patent law but this strikes me as false. I cannot be sued for turning on a radio in a vehicle that I bought or rented. I've never heard of a court thats accepted such frivolous claims either, nor of any law that asserts such.

The manufacturer of that radio can possibly be downstream sued, sure. That sounds at least plausible if they're assembling said radio without proper license for the parts. But simply using a radio in my car doesn't strike me as something enforceable nor legitimate in any way.

How do you figure a user downstream could be sued for not licensing a radio in a car they bought/rented? You're claiming we're all legitimate targets at this point in the eyes of the law (anyone using a radio in a car) so I'd like to understand this.

Anyone who makes use of patented technology that has not been licensed by someone upstream can, indeed be sued, at least in principle. Consider the case of Innovatio, who tried to go after businesses who were providing WiFi for their customers by using routers that contained chips that contained potentially infringing circuitry. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/02/infamous-wi-fi-patent-... . The reason we don’t see more suits of end customers is that it’s not economically feasible - nobody would sue millions of consumers to collect $.10 each, when they can sue the upstream manufacturer just once and collect hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in royalties.

That's exactly what I understood it to mean when I read it.

I read it the other way, but now that you mention it, this interpretation makes much more sense.

> The rest of the paragraph doesn't really describe a memory allocator, it's describing runtime reconfiguration of a circuit, which you can do (and often do do) using a statically allocated configuration block or even a hard-wired dedicated memory.

IMO you are being much too generous in your interpretation of this trolling.

The claim is that pcDuino is infringing because it has a Cortex A9 with addressable memory. This chip does not have any of the fancy reconfiguration you have in mind, but the trolls believe it implements their patent, so I don't see how they can mean what you think they do.

No, I completely agree with you.

I'm nitpicking about a nitpick, and I feel kind of bad for derailing the conversation, because the patent assertion is completely ridiculous.

I just think that Nathan shouldn't have made the jab about malloc, because making that kind of mistake detracts from his otherwise very valid criticism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com