arstechnica.com — Sony has been sued by a mysterious company over a 15-year-old patent covering parallel processing. The plaintiffs claim that the Cell CPU used in the PS3 infringes on a patent they own the rights to, but they chose not to go after IBM, which designed the CPU in the first place.
Jul 31, 2007 View in Crawl 4
piggycowAug 1, 2007
They didn't come up with s**t, just a very broad idea of what may be possible sometime in the future. It was probably seen as insane at the time and thus the patent was granted. They never used it to develop anything and without a doubt Sony will win (unfortunately for them; fortunately for Intel and all those improving on processors though)
abxyAug 1, 2007
"The whole point of the patent system is long lost, and it is getting worse and worse ..."?John Carmack, id Software(Games for Windows Magazine - May 2007 pg. 22)
cptcheeriosAug 1, 2007
Actually With one key point a patent last 20 years from the Original Filling IN this case the original filing was on June 21, 1988. So they have until june 21 2008 for this to work.So what happened. Their Patent was a year from expiring. So they wanted to see what kind of money to get from it. They went looking for something to profit on. There was Sony.Im no lawyer or anything, but What happens on June 22, 2008? Can they still sue IBM? Also if this case drags on past June 21 2008, sony will no longer be infringing upon a patent, so will the lawsuit then be dismissed?
ryelandAug 1, 2007
Correction, Sony is not sick, Sony's games division is losing money as expected during the launch of the PS3 (granted they are losing more than expected) The rest of Sony is doing fantastically well. With HD tv's, digi cam, digi video cams, blu ray, sound systems, home theatres are a huge market these days. However ibm and an intel should help out since the dual core systems perform the same function. This suit is BS if you are going to sue you need to sue everyone who is infringing.
ronpaulsiphoneAug 1, 2007
Sony doesn't need to do anything but pick up the phone and get IBM involved. They will whip out their huge patent portfolio and kill this whole thing. IBM wants to continue selling the Cell, and have no interest in it going away. The fact that they went after Sony and not IBM just shows they know it's a losing case.
vertebrailleAug 1, 2007
The Xenon processor of the 360 uses multicore parellel processing as well; Microsoft is in the same boat as Sony. So are IBM, AMD, Intel, nVidia, etc.