Continuing to follow GameDAILY's 3D Lawsuit Names Top Publishers story: It seems that the law firm McKool Smith has now named hardware manufacturers HP, Dell, IBM, Toshiba, SCEA, Acer, MPC, Systemax, Fujitsu, Micro Electronics, Matsushita, Averatec, Polywell, Sharp, Twinhead, Uniwill, and JVC in an ever-growing extension of it's patent lawsuit. The complaint asserts that the named parties infringed upon the following:
patent 4,730,185 entitled "Graphics Display Methods and Apparatus for Color Dithering"
patent 5,132,670 entitled "System for Improving Two-Color Display Operations"
patent 5,109,520 entitled "Image Frame Buffer Access Speedup By Providing Multiple Buffer Controls Each Containing Command FIFO Buffers"
patent 4,742,474 entitled "Variable Access Frame Buffer Memory"
patent 4,694,286 entitled "Apparatus and Method for Modifying Displayed Color Images"
patent 4,761,642 entitled "System for Providing Data Communication Between a Computer Terminal and a Polarity of Concurrent Processes Running on a Multiple Process Computer"
Or, virtually anything PC-related.
patent 4,730,185 entitled "Graphics Display Methods and Apparatus for Color Dithering"
patent 5,132,670 entitled "System for Improving Two-Color Display Operations"
patent 5,109,520 entitled "Image Frame Buffer Access Speedup By Providing Multiple Buffer Controls Each Containing Command FIFO Buffers"
patent 4,742,474 entitled "Variable Access Frame Buffer Memory"
patent 4,694,286 entitled "Apparatus and Method for Modifying Displayed Color Images"
patent 4,761,642 entitled "System for Providing Data Communication Between a Computer Terminal and a Polarity of Concurrent Processes Running on a Multiple Process Computer"
Or, virtually anything PC-related.
On a related note, I have patented Oxygen and consonants.All seven of these patents were issued in 1992 or earlier, to Tektronix, Inc. It appears that Tektronix sold these patents to McKool Smith, who has used them to bring suit against these 19 hardware manufacturers and the 12 software publishers, just months before the opportunity to do so was up. McKool Smith maintains that these companies are in violation because they assemble machines that enable the patented functionality.