Synaptics patent claims stop work on DisplayLink drivers | Hacker News Reader

Synaptics patent claims stop work on DisplayLink drivers

lwn.net

327 pointsspeckx196 comments

> If you fail to comply with our demands by the specified deadline, Synaptics will seek monetary compensation from you in the amount of US$25,000 to recoup the costs and effort required to create the attached documentation of your infringing acts.

Obviously this is intended as a scare tactic, but, surely that could never hold up in court? Surely the burden of proof is on the owner of the patents to prove that someone's work is infringing, and you can't then say "We are charging the defendant to prove that we have a valid case against them." ?

They can attempt to sue for whatever they want. The court may or may not accept the case. Seeking the recovery of costs for enforcement of ones patents if the defendant does not stop infringing is not under heard of, though it is typically attached to a case seeking the courts ruling that the defendant must stop infringing.

"You've imposed costs on us, because of all the effort we had to go to to show that you've imposed costs on us" ??

The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy

In some countries, but not in America, this is normal - you could win $1 and still whatever your lawyers cost would be added on, to incentivize the defendant to have voluntarily paid the $1 instead of forcing a court to force them to pay the $1.

It works both ways of course, if you lose a suit then you have to repay the defendant for their lawyers.

In Australia it's extremely difficult to get attorney fees covered.

What!? Costs awards are the usual practice in Australian civil litigation.

and worse, even when they are "covered", the cost assessing process does not remotely cover most of your legal costs.

The point is that even fighting it will cost money and effort

There's no way that a thinking human at Synaptic thought this was a good idea. Why would you threaten your own customers for having the gall to try to improve support for your product for free? So I can only assume that they spent $25000 on tokens to generate these threats.

It would sure be a shame if we all vibe coded thousands of clean-room implementations, put them all on github, and then asked Synaptics for patent guidance about each one.

I'm down to do this.

I want to do it in Brainfuck or Prolog or something silly.

Also,

> "single-handedly eviscerating DisplayLink's competitive advantage in this crowded market by educating our competitors and other third parties as to how we implement our proprietary technology"

Isn't that the purpose of a patent?

This is a clown show.

You’re assuming the patent is the only thing in the code. Theres likely also trade secrets, as many pieces of secret sauce are not patentable. No one files patents on things they want as trade secrets after all.

Maybe, but I wonder how that argument would hold up in court, since they're using patent law (where what is protected is public) to make their case.

> I will also be sending to you our demand for substantial monetary compensation to recoup the cost and effort required to create such documentation of your infringing acts.

There is no universe in which this is a reasonable response.

Synaptics: “Look what you made me do to you!”

Open source community "Look what you made us do":

DisplayLink on the driver side just compresses frames to send them over USB.

It would be interesting to analyse if Synaptics haven't stolen code from open source ffmpeg or VLC to do the compression.

I own two of their devices and some of the decomp fairies flittering through the gaming industry might just take a visit to their stack for some internal prodding…

Not only that, but if you were to point Astra, Argon, or Opus at their patents and tell it, "Find some prior art that will invalidate these claims", I suspect the odds of success would be better than even.

See Dan Gelbart's recent video on that very subject: https://youtu.be/v5d8nwgiSYI?si=iM9AFZiRTjxu4OuZ

Maybe it is time to run a friendly LLM and claim to be worried citizen who is seeking relief by reversing the firmware and excluding GPL lisence violations from their nightmares.

I know, right!

“You are stealing our ideas! But we won’t tell you which ones unless you pay us”

In any other domain this would be called a protection racket.

Pretty much how SCO sued IBM. When you sue for infringement, you pretty much have to tell the infringer about the infringement and allow them a chance to rectify it. SCO wasn't interested in rectification - they hoped holding out long enough would force IBM to settle. Didn't happen. And they won nothing.

This case is definitely disingenuous. It's not yet a case. But even an open source project without money needs to be careful. Put dev on hold, hope a benefactor comes along, play it safe for a few days, weeks, months ...

Not really, all of law works that way. Everybody is allowed to demand pretty much anything from anybody for any reason, and include anything in any contract they're party of regardless of legality of any of the demands. It's the other party's responsibility to know which of these are legally valid and invalid.

Law most certainly does NOT work that way. If a business wanted to take you to court over contract violation then they’d have to tell you what you violated.

Likewise, a police officer cannot arrest you without telling you what law you broke.

Technically, Synaptics cannot sue without telling you what patents you violated either. But where patent laws get abused is businesses extorting others over threats of high legal costs.

Nobody is taking anybody to court. They're merely threatening to take to court. It's not illegal to threaten to go to court over bullshit claims, and words are cheap. That's why it keeps happening.

When I said all law, I meant there's nothing about tech patent law that makes it uniquely predisposed to this kind of extortionist behavior. All areas of economic activity have this exact same problem. Employment, debt collection, warranties, housing rentals, and many other things regularly involve pages upon pages of pointed threats written in legalese that don't have any actual laws behind them, but to people without legal experience are indistinguishsble from actual valid claims. There are entire businesses built around the fact most people can't ditinguish it. It's so deeply integrated in our lives that it's basically expected to happen every time a written contract is involved.

The person you responded said nothing about involving the formal legal system. The formal legal system is only involved in about ~1% of legal disputes. ~99% of legal disputes are settled outside of the formal legal system, where yes, anyone can whip open MS Word and type up whatever the fuck they want, and the burden is on the two parties communicating to check each other.

The GP said “law works that way” and what you’re describing isn’t testing law. It’s negotiation over civil disputes.

If Synaptics did want to exercise their legal right under civil law then they’d would have to disclose what properties have been infringed upon.

And they're right, most law is practiced outside of a courtroom. And essentially all civil disputes start outside of them. The vast majority of professional lawyers do not litigate at all.

Id already said civil disputes start outside the court room.

What I’m saying is that not all UK law works on the basis of accusations without evidence, like the GP argued.

Take this specific example, UK civil law does say the initial communication doesn’t have to include the patent numbers. However it does go on to say that if threats are then made then that information should be disclosed

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-patent-act-1977/section-70b-...

If Synaptic require multiple weeks of work at $25,000 a week, to establish what patents are infringed, while also threatening to charge the developer for that time as well as further legal action, then it’s safe to assume that Synaptic didnt have enough confidence from the outset that their original claim was reasonably true.

In short, they are opening themselves up to litigation in return. But since their legal budget is vastly greater than this solo dev’s legal budget would be, they can skirt the fridges of what would be reasonable permitted communications.

BI doubt many UK judges would take favourable view with how Synaptics have handled their correspondence; if this ever were to reach the courts.

That is fair, I think what the above point was that formal technicalities matter only in so much as someone has the means and motivations to go to trial, which is rarely.

Which is why I likened the process to a protection racket. :)

A comment that the GPs you’re defending was objecting to

It depends on the jurisdiction (and there are quite a few in play for HN commentards)

In some jurisdictions, the "threat" describes the maximum possible payout that could be awarded so obviously you deploy a massive sum. I believe that is a US thing.

Law has rules and most of them are written down within most jurisdictions or can be inferred via case law, constitutions, or the distribution of tea leaves (as appropriate).

That's why it called the rule of law - the thing is you need to determine the rules in play. For example you said: "a police officer cannot arrest you without telling you what law you broke."

That is mostly true in the UK, unless you fall afoul of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) which involves some pretty wide ranging powers and effects.

It is unlikely to be even vaguely true in Russia or China or any other jurisdiction that doesn't really bother with nonsensical notions such as: demos kratos.

I shouldn't bother using words like "technically".

The article mentions the jurisdiction being the UK. so I don’t think we need to expand the scope to Russia and China.

in UK law, IP infringement falls under the category of civil law. While these can be settled out of court, you absolutely couldn’t take someone to court without disclosing what property has been infringed upon.

That's not universal, and it's why certain terms are nearly never brought to court because everyone knows they will be laughed out and then they will have to change lots of EULAs for regionally illegal claims

If it was certain, both parties would ignore it. It's only likely to be found invalid, not certain.

It is standard practice to include certainly illegal clauses in contracts. There is no penalty for including illegal clauses, they don't impact the rest of the contract, and there's always the chance the other party is not going to catch it.

In many cases companies do, in practice, exploit other parties lack of law knowledge.

Also encountered many cases where a company simply didn't consider actually vetting what they put on contract against local law

DisplayLink is dying due to high DDR prices. Dock companies are cancelling their display link portfolios due to the unfavorable economics.

Good riddance if this is how OSS is treated by synaptics.

Most recent thunderbolt docks and usb4 docks have good display support, and fallback to DisplayPort alt mode if the host does not support tbt4. Which is much better supported over type-c. Intel and AMD upstream host support.

The place where DisplayLink really made sense was when you needed more monitors than your hardware supported natively.

And that's where I still use it today, primarily on MacBooks

And rather poor support from Apple if I may say so. It's hit or miss if everything works on a MacBook unless you have a thunderbolt 4 and pro edition.

I just run vnc on an android tablet to use it as a monitor.

I didn't find a way to attach two "monitors" to my X screen in this way, but I guess it's doable.

How much ram does DisplayLink use?

On my computer around 500 MB for two additional 4K monitors but I've heard up to 1 GB. With the RAM crunch, running DL + Docker + browser (esp Chrome), it gets pretty laggy sometimes.

What percentage does one gigabyte of RAM represent across the average amount of RAM in a laptop or computer? People who run multiple screens might spend more on RAM and storage, no?

500€ for 32 GB or ram is a stupid price no matter how many displays you own

The laptop I’m provided by work only has 16 gigs of RAM

> DisplayLink is dying due to high DDR prices. Dock companies are cancelling their display link portfolios due to the unfavorable economics.

Do you have an actual source for this or are you just making it up?

I didn't think reverse engineering itself was a violation of a patent? The entire point of a patent is the public disclosure of the mechanism of an invention for the exclusive right to market that invention. Therefore arguing that reverse engineering is a violation of a patent is definitionally incorrect. They should be arguing it's a violation of trade secrets. Of course, they'd lose on that argument too because clean room reverse engineering of a trade secret is fine because you definitionally don't have a patent on it! That's the patent vs trade secret tradeoff!

no, a patent is exclusive right to implement, you can't get around it by reverse engineering

the tradeoff is that it becomes free eventually, unlike trade secrets

Yes, but they're arguing in the letter that the work is _also_ disclosing information that would allow their competitors to know how DisplayLink works. You can't have it both ways.

Yeah, that statement clearly is making IP claims beyond patent infringement, they just didn't elaborate. They didn't say it's patent infringement because of that.

Merely reverse engineering for interoperability is not a violation of any type of IP in the US.

1. Reverse engineering for interoperability gives you a defense for copyright and trade secret claims in the US. It provides zero protection from patent claims. "reverse engineering a patent" doesn't even make any sense. Patents are public, there's nothing to reverse engineer. You could "reverse engineer a specfiic implementation of a patent", but the only thing you'd be accomplishing is just avoiding infringing on the parts of the implementation that are subject to copyright or trade secret protections. You'd still be violating the patent.

2. I'm not saying their arguments are valid. It's a demand letter with multiple claims. There's many reasons it might be an invalid argument but listing more than one grievance and/or not explaining them in detail are not some of those reasons.

Patents can be infringed unknowingly, independently, and with zero reference to the patent claims (or any process that implements them under license).

There’s no reason the code cannot have multiple different things in it, right?

A thing can be encumbered by both patents and trade secrets, can it not?

well technically, yes and no

if I patent a microwave and specify exactly how it works, that part can't be trade secret

BUT if my trade secret is on using ruby diamond for deluxe premium microwave lazor THAT isn't specified on the patent, well that be a trade secret

but trade secret CAN ONLY BE PUNISHED IF someone insider leaks the info -- not much can be done if some junk collector finds out about the ruby stuff

case in point: some youtuber recently reverse engineered the coca-cola formula

hmm but can they actually get the coca?

coca-cola's coca is the coca as in cocaine (literally)

so I heard DEA has some really strict controls on that coca producing facility (so it doesn't produce cocaine)

Coca isn't blanket-illegal. It's just very-heavily restricted in the States. (But not that restricted: My regular dentist is licensed to prescribe cocaine. At a federal level, it's less-restricted than the devil's lettuce is.)

Coca-Cola buys spent coca remains, after they've had the party powder components extracted from them. This product is not particularly restricted.

Right.

But lawyers are prone to using scary phrasing, even if that phrasing has no bite, and are free to write strongly-worded letters.

"I see that you've been publishing the privately-held, trade secret tomato processing technique I developed -- on the Internet! Now, tomato processors everywhere can see it! I'm really pissed! I demand that you stop doing this immediately! In fact, if you want a full enumeration of whar I really think about the terrible things you're doing, then I further demand that you pay me $25,000 for that effort!"

...it's got no bite, but it's a letter. It can be drafted and sent.

(It can also be ignored upon receipt.)

Trade secrets aren't an encumbrance if you discover them independently. Reverse engineering (for interop) is legal in the US. The only leg they have to stand on is patent infringement.

However reverse engineering, even for interop, doesn’t absolve you of EULA things you agreed to, which can include reverse engineering. And any such dispute can drag you into court for years and easily 10s of thousands of dollars, just to defend.

An EULA is not a valid contract.

Where I'm at is that if these open source developers aren't selling or distributing the hardware for this drivers, then anyone that uses this driver implicitly has a license to the patents that they received with the hardware itself.

Trade secrets don't hold up because they're running off of public information either in the distributed binary drivers' behavior, or the behavior of the aforementioned hardware.

All of that being said, I know I don't have the money laying around to fight those in court, and would be drained well before any of those points are adjudicated.

Is writting software "implementing," or is compiling it and releasing binaries (for free,) executing them, or just profiting from the sale, from the perspective of patent law? Isn't describing how something works first ammendment territory, even if the speech is compilable? (err, I guess this was Scotland & UK patent law, not the US, so 1st ammendment is, of course, irrelevant.)

There is no "fair-use", non-commercial, or even personal-use exception to patent law.

Code is speech, but the 1st amendment has recognized exceptions for IP.

That's not quite true. While there's no exemption for personal use, patented inventions can still be used for academic and research purposes. Even if you derive income from that.

E.g. it's a fair game to write and release a book: "How to Replicate DisplayLink" that would walk the reader through the steps in implementing it.

The experimental use exception is so narrow (in the US at least) that typically even non-profit universities often cannot use them without permission.

https://gesmer.com/patent-copyright-trademark/statuatory-cha...

> it's a fair game to write and release a book: "How to Replicate DisplayLink"

And of course, patents don't protect the information that is in them -- they intentionally disclose it -- what they protect is exclusivity of use.

A program per se though is just a detailed description of the "invention" (i.e. a better version of the patent document itself). That's the entire software patent loophole; they take pure math and say "a system where a computer does the described math."

A software program is a "description" of a patent like an office building is a "description" of a blueprint.... they aren't.

They are implementations.

> That's the entire software patent loophole; they take pure math and say "a system where a computer does the described math."

The "do [x] on a computer" loophole was overturned in the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...

But what does any of this have to do with the above discussion?

No, a program is literally, exactly, a blueprint. It is the abstract description. This can even be formally stated mathematically (i.e. programs are formal mathematical objects). Note that you can touch an office building. You can stand inside of one. You cannot touch a program. You cannot stand inside of one. There is no concrete "thing" that is the program. You can only run a program using a (universal) computing machine, which can perform any math.

Ok, call it whatever you want, all of these semantics and metaphors are legally irrelevant anyway. I still fail to see what this tangent has to do with this conversation.

Because a patent is a description of an invention. A computer program (like a driver) is also a description of some algorithm. This is not a metaphor. It is definitionally exactly true. Saying it's protected by a patent is like saying an engineering book is protected by a patent (in fact, you can print a program in... a book, and there are many programs contained in books). It's not only false, but would go against the entire purpose of a patent, which is to publish a description of the invention.

A computer program being "a description" or being published does not preclude it from violating a patent.

Perhaps you disagree with this, but this is the current state.

It does because patents don't cover descriptions of inventions. They cover inventions. Words in a book aren't the right "type" to be able to infringe on a patent, but they can be a computer program.

You yourself linked to a case limiting even the ability to claim that running a computer program on a computer can be patented. The program itself was never patentable.

Right, software itself not patentable, only inventions. That is completely unrelated to the question as to whether software can violate a patent.

If you write software that implements an invention that is patented, you have violated the patent.

The point is that software does not implement an invention. You're making a type error. No software does. It's like saying "a green tastes good." Green doesn't taste anything, and you can't have "a green." It's a color. When you write those words it's just a nonsense string. Software doesn't implement any patent just like 5 or pi don't implement any patent. It's a formal mathematical object. It also can't violate a patent because you can't patent mathematical objects, only inventions. An implementation of a patent may contain a computer that runs software.

It's like saying a circuit diagram could infringe on a patent. No, only a circuit can. Software is the diagram. A thing running software can infringe, but software isn't the right type of thing to be able to infringe. You can print books full of detailed diagrams and instructions all day long. The patent is already supposed to describe the thing! It's not secret! A description of every last detail is not protected!

This is also why you can prove things about software. You cannot prove things about inventions; only models of the inventions. You can actually prove statements about software itself because it is already part of formal mathematics.

Again, you are conflating "what can be patented" with "what can infringe"

If you make, use, produce, supply, induce someone to use anything that does a thing that is listed in a claim of a patent -- you have violated the patent.

The argument that "software is just abstract math and so there's no way it can infringe" is bologna... like sovcit-level bologna. Any actual articulable piece of written software is not some abstract mathematical concept, it is the configuration for a machine. Courts simply do not treat software in the way you are asserting, they treat it like a component in a system. And whether or not you built the full system or you are contributing to or inducing someone else's system, doesn't matter much, it is merely the difference between direct and indirect infringement.

If what you are asserting was true, it would be great for the software industry -- we wouldn't have to worry about patents anymore!

The Supreme Court of the US literally held that software is like a blueprint, or a detailed set of instructions. Because that's what it is:

> Abstract software code is an idea without physical embodiment, and as such, it does not match §271(f)’s categorization: “components” amenable to “combination.” Windows abstracted from a tangible copy no doubt is information—a detailed set of instructions—and thus might be compared to a blueprint (or anything else containing design information). A blueprint may contain precise instructions for the construction and combination of the components of a patented device, but it is not itself a combinable component.

Courts do actually understand that software is an abstract mathematical idea. And this is the only sane way to treat software. Otherwise you'd have e.g. Lean proofs as patentable subject matter. There is no line you can draw where you say "this is software, and that is a proof." Formal reasoning (e.g. through types) is all over real world, useful software.

For what it's worth I've never actually encountered anyone who's even mentioned patents at work in the last decade. It's not a day-to-day concern that I've seen.

Yeah, when it comes to determining the question of the country of origin for the particular way they were delivering the software -- which was what quote was about.

Courts did find MS liable for infringing on AT&T's patent for Windows installed on computers in the US. And this wasn't discussed at all in that court case; it was never challenged up to SCOTUS because it was plainly a violation.

Computers running Windows with some functionality are not the same thing as Windows. That's literally the point the court made. Windows, the software, is abstract math, and cannot on its own infringe on anything. They very clearly laid out that Windows itself is a set of instructions.

Hence they could ship the intangible software itself abroad and install it without infringing on US patent law. Merely creating the software did not infringe.

That case only ruled on §271(f). Plenty of routine FOSS activities could qualify for other violations under that statute. The most likely is probably inducement -- have a README that tells someone how to install the software on a computer? You just induced them to put together the infringing system.

You can get around it by reverse engineering it as long as what's sold doesn't violate that patent. Many companies have had to reverse engineer an existing patent to figure out what they can do instead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_around

> Design-arounds are considered to be one of the benefits of patent law. By providing monopoly rights to inventors in exchange for disclosing how to make and use their inventions, others are given both the information and incentive to invent competitive alternatives that design around the original patent. In the field of vaccines, for example, design-arounds are considered fairly easy. It is often possible to use the original patent as a guide for developing an alternative that does not infringe the original patent.

I realize this is a legal case and not engineering logic, but man, they really seem to give away the game:

The letter continued to claim that Lothian would be "single-handedly eviscerating DisplayLink's competitive advantage in this crowded market by educating our competitors and other third parties as to how we implement our proprietary technology"

To be clear, a patent is an exclusive right to the specific functional invention, and if that invention happens to cover the one and only way to talk to the device, then it'll be hard to make a driver. In many cases you'll be able to make one for yourself due to some funny-business around patent exhaustion.

However, there is no universe where they can hold a valid patent that would encumber a driver for a regular USB display device. What they then might try to do is invoke DMCA, due to the device having DRM responsibilities (HDCP).

If they get trusted HDCP treatment from media players on some platforms, they might fight tooth and nail to not be broken open in public as that might end up with them losing trust from content providers...

Or maybe they're just assholes with no real rhyme or reason, who knows.

> If they get trusted HDCP treatment from media players on some platforms, they might fight tooth and nail to not be broken open in public as that might end up with them losing trust from content providers...

Yeah, I suspect the whole patent claim is just a ruse to try and prevent people from looking into their likely insecure HDCP implementation.

And a patent can be invalidated for the lack of enablement. I.e. for not disclosing sufficient information for an average skilled practitioner to re-implement it.

Umm... what? Implementing the things described in a patent is literally a patent violation regardless of how you go about it. Reverse engineering only gets a pass for trade secrets. As you said, a patent literally describes how to do the thing.

DisplayLink is a "clever" software workaround to hardware limitations that shouldn't exist anymore and I hope it goes away. When I got stuck with a DisplayLink dock at work it caused no end of audio issues when connecting and disconnecting, the driver had to be restarted all the time, it was a pain

Even "modern" systems like the Apple M1 and M2 base chips had hardware limits of 1 external monitor, a massive regression from the previous Intel systems.

That was just a blip in the Mac timeline. A year later the M1 Pro came out which supported multiple.

That said, very few people connect multiple external monitors to a laptop

What do you mean? Pretty much everyone at the two places I work at connect 2 monitors to their laptops. Who works using their laptop screen when at their desk?!

Where I work I had to sort of convince everyone that dual 27 inch screens is a really great setup. I think most white collar workers with a laptop get used to the laptop keyboard and trackpad and think its weird to dock it and use a regular keyboard and mouse. That is... until they try it.

...(it's me, i work on my laptop screen at my desk)

It has worked for me pretty great on linux for years.

The problem it solves is that if you have 3 screens (you can often get 3 gpu ouptus) then you are already OCD enough so you will need 4th screen to even them out.

My company used to have some display link docks, which I was unable to use due to bugs in the Linux implementations.

For a while I'd keep an eye on updates to see if they'd been fixed but they never were before we moved office.

I'm going to be quite sure we don't get any more in any future offices (we don't have them at our current office)

Every DisplayLink hub or dock or adapter I've tried using has been a terrible nightmare. I've tried on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Now I actively avoid them.

Mine works just fine with the newest Dell XPS 14 laptop and Ubuntu.

I've had terrible experiences with most of the big computer name brands making Displaylink hubs. Frequent driver issues, unexplainable compatibility issues, hardware failures, and more.

My only "wow this thing just works everywhere" was actually the Plugable brand docs. Obviously can't do things like 3D gaming, but for regular desktop kind of applications dang have these things been largely bulletproof. Especially the older USB 3.0 ones.

I still remember running five displays (including the built-in) off a single cheap HP Split X2 back in the day thanks to a Plugable dock.

Plugable does great stuff - they're my go-to for basically any type of dongle they manufacture.

Might be related to the acquisition by onsemi:

https://www.onsemi.com/company/newsroom/news-and-insights/on...

Is DisplayLink a company owned by Synaptics or just a file in a portfolio? How do they make money from DisplayLink except from selling the docks? Licensing?

They make money by authoring standards which force vendors to buy even more parts/licenses from them.

DisplayLink was acquired by Synaptics in 2022

So they are and aren't part of OIN at the same time.

Per the article, even if they weren't trying to play semantic games about subsidiaries (which OIN really shouldn't allow), OIN excludes "codec" patents and considers the DisplayLink patents to be "codec" patents.

By some definition, anything is a codec :clownface:

Schrödinger’s membership. Exists when it helps them, they’ve never heard of it when it doesn’t

Huh, DisplayLink is still around?

Why actually, given that even smartphones can drive Displayport alt mode over USB-C, and tablets can speak full Thunderbolt/USB 4? Is it cheaper to implement in dock and/or laptop hardware?

You can use DisplayLink on Android (just attach a random* DisplayLink dock via USB-OTG), install the DisplayLink app and you get your Android screen in big. Combine that with Termux and Termux-X11 (on some phones you even get 3d acceleration) and you can get a surprisingly decent* desktop. (Many non-flagship Android phones don't have native video output. IMO it actually adds to the cost to have models that support video output and models that don't, but the market segmentation probably makes it worth it from the manufacturer's perspective.)

* I use a random (USB3) HP one

** There may be some lag/tearing, so maybe not so good for movies

TIL.

I had an old Plugable USB 2.0 adapter laying around. I attached it to my 2025 vintage Moto phone, installed the "DisplayLink Presenter" APK and, I'll be damned-- I'm displaying my phone on a monitor.

Using a USB OTG hub, this adapter, a keyboard, and a mouse could actually make a reasonable desktop machine for RDP'ing and SSH'ing to other machines.

I haven't tried playing video but I suspect it would suuuuuuck over this USB 2.0 adapter. For text-based stuff, though, it seems completely reasonable.

>> An independently written or clean-room implementation does not necessarily avoid patent infringement if it implements patented inventions.

Can someone explain this to me? Isn't this the whole premise of reverse engineering?

Reverse engineering is mostly to address trade secret and copyright infringement.

Patents can be avoided if you can prove that a patent is "obvious to a practitioner in the field" but that's a highish bar to prove in court and requires expensive lawyers

Nevertheless Synaptics are behaving as arse here and as a purely practical matter should be welcoming people who will bring them more customers for free

A patent is a description of how something is solved, such that someone with expertise can recreate it. That patent then grants a monopoly on that method for a period of 20 years in the US, if you keep paying renewal fees.

The whole reverse engineering clean room thing, is to show no copyright infringement and / or trade secret (primarily trade secret). How could they intentionally copy the code, if they cannot see the code.

Patents are far stronger in that sense, but they do have an expiration date. People independently come up with techniques and infringe patents all the time. Look up the patent litigation history of CRISPR which are still going strong it …

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/nobel-prize-winners...

There’s a million examples.

For context, here’s my company IP Copilot - https://ipcopilot.ai/

It’s also disturbing they have the gall to demand tens of thousands of dollars for the task of specifying which of their 100+ maybe relevant patents he’s infringing.

Does UK patent law somehow work differently?

Microsoft Is Making An Astonishing $2 Billion Per Year From Android Patent Royalties[0].

[0]: https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-earns-2-billion-pe...

That was for FAT file system, which expired long ago.

> This money, says Sherlund, helps Microsoft hide the fact that its mobile and Xbox groups are burning serious cash.

Little did they know how much bigger that pyre would get lmao

Synaptics should lose all access to Linux.

Isn't there a clause like that in the GPLv3 which is one of the reasons Linus hates it?

GPLv3 is boring in this respect, because it lets violators come back into compliance and regain all rights after 60 days.

(I say boring, but this is definitely a good thing. See the Samba talks about GPLv3 from 2017 and 2011 for why)

GPLv2 works the same way for license violators. It would be sweet irony if they linked any GPL source into their codebase.

When a company does something like this, do the right thing and choose not to buy their products or do business with them.

If you use any of their older products, it may be time to migrate away to more modern solutions, ideally ones made by companies that don't send legal threats to open source developers.

>Yes, you should be concerned. Very concerned, actually

Unbelievable mafia tactics from those clowns.

This is why good useful free projects are hosted on onion sites.

I finally upgraded all my gear to USB3.1Gen2+ so I no longer need to use DisplayLink. It's so nice. No more messing around with weird broken drivers. I just plug things in and they work.

No more messing with weird broken drivers but now there's often messing around with weird (and sometimes broken) cables. Some of us have boxes full of USB-C cables that we have no idea what they do.

Threw all mine out, replaced them with USB4 + 240W PD. Standard for USB4 requires minimum 20Gbps speed, protocol tunneling, backwards compatibility. The 240W PD is not standard, but you can find USB4 cables with it, and that guarantees all the previous PD standards. So it's a universal cable. Bought a couple chargers too, from 60W-140W, and a desktop multi-port charger that does combined 400W+. My USB4 dock gets power from that and plugs into whatever laptop.

I support Federico Faggins company

This is nonsensical and paradoxical

Synaptics claims the driver work undermines their competitive advantage of proprietary connectivity methods, which means undisclosed, while patents trade disclosure for a monopoly

If someone happens to figure out how the undisclosed proprietary side works without exfiltrating trade secrets then there is no legal remedy, tough luck. Compete with customer support if you can

Pick a lane, Synaptics failed to pick a lane here suggesting there is some legal interoperability work outside of its patent claims, that abridges its non-patented trade secret claims, and I think that undermines their patent protection claim

"Your actions are potentially putting tens of millions of dollars of yearly corporate revenue at risk."

https://static.lwn.net/images/pdf/Cease_and_Desist_Notice_Mi...

Fuck you, Synaptics.

Felony contempt of business model?

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/felony-contempt-busine...

> Fuck you, Synaptics.

Which is made funnier by the lawyer's name being Bateman. Sorry, could not resist that one.

What I find more ridiculous is the timing:

> You are to provide Synaptics, no later than 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on October 11, 2026

The letter is dated "October 5, 2026". WTF are these lawyers smoking that they think 5 days is any reasonable time frame.

> The letter is dated "October 5, 2026". WTF are these lawyers smoking that they think 5 days is any reasonable time frame.

They just try to keep the pressure up so that the other entity gives up before they have time to estimate whether any of the claims are valid. One person against big corporation, which is threatening with big penalties. A common tactic.

> The letter continued to claim that Lothian would be "single-handedly eviscerating DisplayLink's competitive advantage in this crowded market by educating our competitors and other third parties as to how we implement our proprietary technology". He said that DisplayLink is not a member of OIN, and none of its technology is licensable through OIN or any other organization.

Isn’t the whole point of a patent to make the “how” patently obvious so others may learn from it?

If one guy can reverse-engineer everything with an LLM and some free time, I'm pretty sure their competitors can as well, and they won't be doing it out in the open like this guy was...

this is a good point. Isn't one of the pre-conditions for a patent (in the US at least, this case was UK) that it be "non-obvious" ? If LLMs can shit out working solutions that infringe patents, or "trivially" reverse engineer protocols, I wonder if we will see challenges in court that it was "obvious" to ask the LLM, and therefore the patents were trivial and therefore should be invalidated?

It's a fascinating question isn't it. I personally think the answer is pretty clearly yes for an increasingly wider array of inventions.

What fascinates me is the evidentiary question. How can courts satisfy themselves that (to adopt the EPO problem-solution approach) faced with a given problem, the mere prompting of an LLM was sufficient to arrive at a solution. Will we have consultants with zoos of LLMs providing evidence of their capability at a patent's priority date? Will patent offices need to provide examiners with access to the wayback machine for AI models? How can you, as the applicant, possibly argue with that? What degree of fiddling with the prompt to elicit a solution is fair?

That seems to be a separate claim unrelated to their patent claims. Patents themselves are required to have all of the information that would allow someone to implement what is in the patent. Of course, there could be many ways to implement it. And a specific implementation could be further protected by trade secrets. The part that would be a trade secret is inherently not in the patent.

You have to wonder if this part was approved by a qualified lawyer at all. A trade secret would describe proprietary knowledge of how to implement the technology, but would have no protection under patent law.

They also repeatedly claimed "DisplayLink is not a member of OIN" when it actually is, and later when they acquiesced to the cease and desist, one of the actual engineers from the company tried to review the PR to ask for changes. It's not clear anyone there has any clue what's going on!

You're saying I can't use a shell company acquisition as a means to shield certain technologies from my other agreements? Booo

I suspect they know that, but it reads as if they were just lazily tacking that claim on for effect. This isn't a petition to a court, this is just a demand letter. Listing out a bunch of scary damages is how demand letters often work. They don't have to go into details as to the basis of their legal claims.

This demand letter may become evidence in a future case and judges don't look kindly upon lies and deception.

Yes, but this claim is not that... It sounds like they're making an argument about trade secrets, without explicitly detailing the legal justification for it.

You definitely don't need to cite the legal justification for every demand you make in a demand letter.

You don't even need to have a valid justification to make a demand in a demand letter... it is common and normal to make arbitrary demands... they are negotiations.

Trade secrets aren't protected by law. That's why they aren't disclosed. If someone lawfully reverse engineers your trade secret, its secrecy disappears without legal recourse. Decompiling a binary for RE interop purposes is legal in the US.

That is a common misconception, but trade secrets are absolutely protected by law, in most countries around the world.

https://www.wipo.int/en/web/trade-secrets#systems

Now yes, they're fair game for reverse engineering, but that doesn't mean someone can't be mad about it and tell you not to do it.

Synaptics should be removed from the OIN, it’s clearly a bad faith member.

also whoever this synaptics dude is sounds like a royal “a*hat”. It sounds like he reported them to legal and they decided to go crazy for no reason.

This is a codec only if you stand on your hands.

It’s rather sad they’re resorting to this, especially for someone doing something they themselves should’ve done.

In all honesty…. Good riddance.

I wish Synaptics a very "find this work fully completed by someone on https://gitflic.ru/" day.

I've never had a pc that used displaylink, but less fortunate friends in corporate jobs describe a sinking feeling of dread when realising what their laptop has.

Bad technology that doesn't deserve to exist, it seems. This is the kind of tech where it's better to finish off the RE work and release it anonymously to harm them. Adversarial interoperability, as Cory Doctorow would put it

Gee, Synaptics seems a bit touchy about this…

I'll never fail to be surprised by the wide eyed naivety of some programmers. There was no other reasonably expected outcome. If I were to take on a project to improve open source capabilities for a proprietary piece of hardware or software I wouldn't be putting my name to it, you're just asking for liability.

Lets all vibe / reverse engineer 30 replacements and make it open source

"If you don't stop doing free work which improves the chances of purchase, among Linux users, of machines that contain our chip, you are an infringer and we are going to charge you $25K for the cost of this psychotic meltdown we are having, including all required counselling and medication."

Well now there will be 8 of whatever it is Synaptics didn't like.

What a good way to encourage not to use this garbage. No one should need it anyway, there is DisplayPort and USB 4.

At some point there needs to be a test of when software is related to owning hardware.

Some questions that come to mind are:

Do you actually own the hardware?

Do you stop owning the hardware, meaning you're not allowed or able to use it once the company that's sold it to you stops providing or updating hardware?

Does every piece of hardware come with a guarantee that it will work on every piece of hardware that it's attached to forever?

These are just a few of the really troubling questions when people forget that software has to run on hardware. And the closer the software is to the core operation of a piece of hardware and equipment, the more topics like right to repair or right to maintain or right to optimize come up.

I never thought that a video card replacement driver would make me think of companies that are limiting Farmers from repairing and updating their own tractors.

If you want to know whether any relatively modern computer hardware is encumbered by IP restrictions, it's pretty simple, the answer is yes.

The closest you can get is something like the Raptor Talos II, although parts of the hardware are still under patent.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50363968

Available only to subscribers, so, most of HN can't see this page I guess.

EDIT: Fixed now.

AFAIK, links to LWN pages are intentionally always visible to non-subscribers.

In any case, I am not a subscriber and I see it.

Subscribers can create a free link to the content. And all articles become publicly available after one week of paywall.

It seems they made it available.

LWN operates a kind of soft paywall as a form of try-before-you-buy

> The following subscription-only content has been made available to you by an LWN subscriber. Thousands of subscribers depend on LWN for the best news from the Linux and free software communities. If you enjoy this article, please consider subscribing to LWN. Thank you for visiting LWN.net!

Yes, I'm able to see it now.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

> Are paywalls ok?

> It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

> In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic. More here.

Seriously, use OCuLink. It costs $15 for the pcie card, $10 for a cable, and $100 for a GFX card dock, and a PSU.

OCuLink doesn't even use drivers. It's literally just a PCIE passthrough. All usual tools apply, whereas DisplayLink encrypts all data, so a big fuckyou for getting logs.

Quit giving trash companies pounds of money for abuse at scale.

I predict a high chance that they lose this patent. Mark my words.

https://lkml.rescloud.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/2610.1/1...

According to patent prosecution records, the independent claims for GB2484736 originally lacked any network transport limitations and were deemed entirely unpatentable against the prior art listed above.

To get the patent granted, DisplayLink’s attorneys amended the claims to specifically add delivery of the display data over a "general-purpose data network." The validity challenge relies on proving that adding a general-purpose transport layer (like USB or Ethernet) to existing image-compression methodologies was an obvious step and completely unoriginal in 2010, given the widespread existence of USB monitors and network-attached graphics at the time.

> mapping claim 11 of DisplayLink GB Patent No. 2484736 and claim 11 of DisplayLink GB Patent No. 2485613 to your Vino driver source code

As far as I can tell, these patents only go up to claim 10 in the first place:

- https://patents.google.com/patent/GB2484736A/en

- https://patents.google.com/patent/GB2485613A/en

Strange, I noticed that too. I couldn't find any other patent reference for GB Patent No. 2485613 with more than 10 claims.

Secret FISA Patent Claim

U not cleared to see it

The patent generally covers methods and architectures for transmitting compressed screen updates over a general-purpose data network, such as USB or Ethernet, the patent specifically claims Haar-transform decoding.

So only the combination may be new. But this reminds me of a USPTO thing from my past.

The landmark ruling you are referring to is the U.S. Supreme Court case KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (2007), which led directly to the USPTO publishing its highly influential 2010 Examination Guidelines for Determining Obviousness. Under this framework, if element A is known and element B is known, combining them is not patentable if the combination yields nothing more than predictable results.

https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2143.html

So, general-purpose data network, such as USB or Ethernet was known (A), claims Haar-transform decoding was known (B) [DE69909880T2 / EP0955609]. Even if we don't find this combination in prior art, it is dubious that this is patent worthy based on USPTO guidelines (combine A with B).

But I see a lot of stuff that suggests prior art:

1. Noriaki Yamazaki and Tetsuo Tanaka (2007). “ZYWRLE: Enhanced VNC Codec for Motion Picture.” IEICE Transactions, J90-D(7), pp. 1790–1798. Brief summary: Adds wavelet compression to VNC’s ZRLE codec for transmitting moving images, reducing network traffic to 20–50% of standard ZRLE. https://search.ieice.org/bin/summary.php?abst=j&category=D&i...

2. Joshua G. Senecal, Peter Lindstrom, Mark A. Duchaineau and Kenneth I. Joy (2004). “An Improved N-Bit to N-Bit Reversible Haar-Like Transform.” Proceedings of Pacific Graphics 2004, pp. 371–380. DOI: 10.1109/PCCGA.2004.1348368. Brief summary: Introduces PLHaar, a reversible Haar-like transform supporting lossy and lossless image compression without increasing coefficient bit width, suitable for bandwidth-limited video and graphics hardware. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/15014239

3. Joshua G. Senecal, Mark A. Duchaineau and Kenneth I. Joy (2004). “Reversible n-Bit to n-Bit Integer Haar-Like Transforms.” Proceedings of the Data Compression Conference 2004, p. 564. Brief summary: Introduces lookup-table Haar-like transforms that preserve bit width and reversibility, with applications to fast image compression and streaming hardware such as DVI channels. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/15013668

Good luck synaptic!

There's also a 2003 datasheet the describes basically the same compressed framebuffer transport as GB2485613: https://www.amd.com/content/dam/amd/en/documents/archived-te..., section 5.5.2

Also possibly related:

Method and apparatus for increasing memory resource utilization in an information stream decoder, https://patents.google.com/patent/WO1999057908A1/en

And a paper by a PHD student in 2005, Real-time Rendering with Wavelet-Compressed Multi-Dimensional Datasets on the GPU, https://cs.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/documents/2005-05.pd...

Displaylink's own abandoned patent application talking about sending patches of compressed/uncompressed graphical data to the screen over USB: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20060119602A1/en

Using reference frames with Haar wavelet transforms in video compression, https://patents.google.com/patent/US6272180B1/en

Is this a potential use case for having a gen AI agent grind to put a prior art claim together? Feels like scanning and building prior art to challenge existing patents is a great use of AI agents, but I might be mistaken.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5d8nwgiSYI

Brilliant, thanks for the share.

You assume there is some logic to software patents. It looks like an extortion racket to me. If you don’t pay enough fire insurance the mob lets your competition burn your business down.

I wouldn't pin that on patents specifically, it seems you can shut down a free software project by suing them for literally anything, even something they obviously didn't do because they can't afford a lawyer and can't afford a loss so their only option is to give in to everything you want.

If software patents are slop, you fight slop with slop.

It would take much human time to search for prior art across all of human knowledge for existing patents and new patents being proposed. But GPUs are tireless, and can continually grind towards success. They build their case for dismantling all existing active patents as long as they are kept fed.

If I were a frontier lab, I would be finding the most valuable patents, starting the research agents up, and then shorting companies that would see enterprise value decline if subject patents were invalidated (think Hindenburg or Culper Research activist investors). Just one way of monetizing the fancy search engine and token dispenser.

https://www.cloudflare.com/jengo/sable-prior-art-search/

https://www.eff.org/issues/patent-busting-project

> I predict a high chance that they lose this patent. Mark my words.

After how many dollars spent? I mean, it is good that eventually bad patents get killed, but it still costs too much to do it, one at a time. We need a more streamlined process, maybe? Maybe an academic-review-like process at filing? Send the claims anonymously to a few experts in the field, randomly selected. If they all say it is obvious, kill it immediately and fine the company for wasting the patent office's time?

Ex Parte Reexamination (A streamlined request to have a USPTO examiner re-evaluate the patent) $6,775 (Streamlined, ≤ 40 pages)

I think we could get the 7 grand together here.

This is a UK patent, the USPTO has no jurisdiction over it.

In the UK, there is an administrative "reexamination" process that is significantly cheaper... only 250 UKP: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/request-for-opini...

If someone wants to do the work to put together and file the claim, I'll provide the ₤250. Worth it to see attempted patent enforcement destroyed.

I think this is a great idea.

My only concern is, what if some well-meaning person puts in a poorly constructed claim, and then that creates a counterproductive precedent.

I think ideally, someone like Software Freedom Conservancy or the Linux Foundation or the FSF or whoever would take charge of doing it, taking advice from patent attorneys in the process.

Maybe there is some UK patent attorney reading this who is willing to take it on pro bono?

> My only concern is, what if some well-meaning person puts in a poorly constructed claim, and then that creates a counterproductive precedent.

If this were possible, patent holders would surely already be gaming it.

A bit pedantic (since my wife is in IP), but you don't need a patent attorney for most patent things, you just need a patent agent. (Who may also be an attorney.) Non-attorney patent agents can handle basically everything related to patents other than litigation.

To be even more pedantic :)

Since we are talking about the UK not the US

“patent attorney” vs “patent agent” is a US distinction. In the UK, “patent attorney” is the standard term for what is called “patent agent” in the US - someone who can appear before the patent office, but cannot (in general) practice law. [0] Now, unlike US patent agents, UK patent attorneys can actually appear in court for patent litigation (they all get some limited rights to do so, and can gain additional rights by undertaking advanced training) - however, in practice, you’d use an IP solicitor/barrister for any high value patent litigation, it is mainly at the low end that UK patent attorneys handle litigation independently of a solicitor or barrister. A solicitor or barrister who specialises in patent law doesn’t have to be qualified as a patent attorney, and although it is technically possible to do so, few actually are.

[0] Technically, the UK classifies patent attorneys as legal professionals-in popular parlance, “lawyers”-but unlike solicitors and barristers, who are generalist legal professionals permitted (in principle) to practice in any legal area, a patent attorney is a specialist legal profession whose scope of legal practice is officially restricted to intellectual property (they are allowed to advise on non-patent IP law matters such as copyrights, and also related commercial law matters such as IP contracts, but not on legal matters which have no connection with IP)

Yes, it's quite jurisdiction dependant - I'm actually in Canada, not the US, and while my wife works with various foreign associates and I expect is familiar with that UK distinction, that's not a point I was clear on. :)

X11? RDP?

The most disturbing part is that a single developer, with some AI assistance, was able to improve hardware support that the manufacturer couldn't or wouldn't fix. Instead of embracing that work, Synaptics threatened to financially ruin him. As AI lowers the barrier to reverse engineering and interoperability, I suspect we'll see a lot more companies reaching for lawyers when their technical moats start disappearing.

Disturbing that this pretty reasonable take was flagged.

The patent system itself has been a moat and we will see more and more reasonable submissions that will force a rethink.

It was probably flagged because it’s AI slop

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