Homework 9: Patent Liability Analysis

Due: Friday, March 31, at NOON

Team Code Name: SLOW Group No. __8__

Team Member Completing This Homework: VARUN BANSAL

E-mail Address of Report Author: vbansal@ purdue.edu

Evaluation:

Component/Criterion / Score / Multiplier / Points

Introduction and Summary

/ 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / X 1
Results of Patent/Product Search / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / X 4
Analysis of Patent Liability / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / X 2
Action Recommended / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / X 1
List of References / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / X 1
Technical Writing Style / 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / X 1
TOTAL

Comments:

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1.0Introduction

The idea of the SLOW project is to design and build an LED panel consisting of 10 5x7 cascaded LED dot matrices. The panel will be used to display text messages, time and outdoor temperature. The panel will have a scrolling feature which will allow a user to display long text messages. The system is intended to be used by establishments like chain restaurants (for displaying specials, etc) or even public places like bus stops in a city (to display the time, temperature or news) as it can be controlled from a distance. The user will be able to modify the text display from a remote location via an embedded web server, thus making the system accessible from any location at anytime. The system will have a mechanism to save the current state of the system in the flash memory in case of a power failure.

Taking into consideration patent liability and infringement, some design issues implemented by the SLOW project could fall under certain patents or could lead to infringement upon other registered patents. This document will address the issues mentioned above by comparing similar patented design to our SLOW project, as well as proposing methods to mitigate the patent liability.

2.0Results of Patent and Product Search

United StatesPatent No: 6112335 [1a]

Method and apparatus for remotely managing a network hardware device having an embedded server with a client computer across a network

Filing Date: May 27, 1997

Inventor:David Martin Gee

Assignee: Agilent Technologies, Inc.

Patent 6112335 discloses a technique of remote management of a hardware device using an industry standard internetwork protocol. The hardware device consists ofa client and protocol stack along with an embedded web server installed on it. The claims of this patent include:

  • Controlling and managing a hardware device remotely through a HTTP client with a help of an embedded web server.
  • Successfully setting up an internet connection via a TCP/IP protocol.
  • Have control requests from a HTTP client to edit/change characteristics on a network hardware device.
  • The network is the internet and the HTML file is the homepage.

United StatesPatent No: 6580404 [1b]

Patent 6580404 claims a dot matrix display withparallel arrangements of dot matrix modules.It also has a driver for controlling the contents to be displayed on the modules. It has light emitting elements and light receiving elements between the modules which makes the transmission of the content possible across the modules.

Filing Date: February 17, 1999

Inventor:Takayuki Ishihara

Assignee: Rohm Co., Ltd.

The claims with this patent include:

  • Multiple dot matrix display modules arranged in parallel with luminous sections(LEDs) in the matrix form.
  • Use of shift registers to control the turning on and off of LEDs.
  • Use of light emitting and light receiving elements on each module.
  • Use of 2 Ram devices, with the first one containing the data to be sent to the shift register to display on the current module and 2nd Ram device for storing the data for the next module

United StatesPatent No: 5977937 [1c]

Patent 5977937 claims a display device which has multiple display units, each of which has multiple display elements. Each of the display unit can be controlled simultaneously using the respective display driver. The circuit consists of a microcontroller, memory device to store the data to be outputted via the display device, and a DMA controller for transferring the data.

Filing Date: August 14, 1995

Inventor:Uwe Michaelis

Assignee:U.S. Philips Corporation

The key claims are:

  • A circuit arrangement consisting of multiple display units with multiplexed display elements which are controlled by a display driver.
  • Memory device is used to store the display content to sent to the display blocks.
  • Circuit has a microcontroller with a central processor, at least one serial synchronous interface and a DMA controller to transfer data without disturbing the central processor every time data needs to be sent.

3.0Analysis of Patent Liability

Analysis of Patent No. 6112235 [1a]:

This design is similar due to the fact that it uses the method for remote management of a network hardware device. There is a possibility of literal infringement as all the claims made in the patent are applied to the SLOW design. Our design configures an embedded server on a network hardware device. The SLOW design has many more features than this patent but does not eliminate infringement possibilities and measures will have to be taken to change a little bit of the implementation to avoid those issues.

Analysis of Patent No. 6580404 [1b]:

This design performs substantially the same way as the SLOW. Hence, patent infringement through the doctrine of equivalents[2] comes into play. Even though this design connects the modules in series where as each of our module is connected directly to the microcontroller, much of its implementation details and functionalities are similar. The design also uses two RAM devices where as the only RAM our project uses, is the one located on the microcontroller. But on the whole, the design is targeted for the same functionality. As there are a number of patent claims with LED Dot Matrix Displays, even a slight difference in themmay be enough to avoid infringement.

Analysis of Patent No. 5977937 [1c]:

This design can also fall under the infringement through the doctrine of equivalents [2] as some of the claims made are equivalent as we are also using a central processor and a number of synchronous serial interfaces. But since some of the claims are different as we don't use a DMA controller or any storage members other than the shift registers in the micro controller. The design uses the DMA controller so that it can display data without using the central processor, where as need to use the central processor to send any display signal. But, again since the overall functionality most of the implementation is the same, it could fall under an infringement.

4.0Actions Recommended

Since there exists literal infringement on one of the patents, the only action would be to pay the royalty fees associated with that particular patent. The other patents which we found are quite different from the way our design work and so, we might have to just redesign little bit of the current design to avoid any infringements from the patents listed above.

The best way to avoid infringement, however, would be to investigate patents during the early design stages of the product. Paying royalties is usually not the best course of action. Designing around patents from the beginning assures no patent liability or lengthy court cases to decide whether or not the product can be marketed.

5.0Summary

LED panels are quite common these days but the panels on which the messages can be displayed from remote distances via internet and with the capability to display current temperature using the inbuilt sensor is a new concept and has a very good future in chain restaurants and public places like bus stops, etc. For this reason we had a hard time in finding patents related to our project. With the completion of this document we were able to find three registered patents related to our project, out of which our project infringed with the first one and had similar functionality to the last two patents.

List Of References

[1] US Patent 6112335

[2] US Patent 6580404

[3] US Patent 5977937

[4] “Doctrine of Equivalent”, [Online Reference], 2006

ECE 477Digital Systems Senior Design ProjectSpring 2006

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