Tuesday, July 31, 2007

The Cell Suit: Parallel Processing v. Sony

Another new lawsuit was recently filed against Sony, this one by Parallel Processing. While I am still searching for a freely available version of the 5 page complaint, reports are that the infringement suit is based on a parallel processing system from a patent dated October 8, 1991 (which I assume is patent 5,056,000). This is, of course, how the Cell processor works.

The patent case claims irreparable harm, and demands the impounding and destruction of all infringing devices. While this is a legitimate claim to remedy, it seems extremely unlikely that a court would grant anything more than money damages in this case. So I, and the other PS3 owners, can rest easy knowing that a judge won't be impounding our systems as a result of this case.

The bigger question is whether Sony actually did infringe on this patent to create the PS3, and if so, how many Immersion type incidents can Sony handle?

2 comments:

Unknown said...

its not actually "Parallel Processing" its the acacia Technology's group that owns the patent which was only bought by them on May 03 2007 http://www.acaciaresearch.com/pr/050307ParallelProcess.pdf

Dan said...

It's just one thing after another with Sony.