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WARF goes after Intel, but not after CIRM

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

A post on patenthawk on Feb. 8 began: WARF, the Klingon who once served on the Starship Enterprise, has resurfaced on earth as a patent troll, albeit oversized, as patent trolls are normally dwarfish. and engendered a comment: As a long time "Trekkie" I've got to agree, this posting is a real hoot!

IPBiz notes that, after someone referred to the initial StarTrek as a "western set in space," IPBiz could never look at StarTrek in the same light.

Of the real WARF, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, the suit against Intel shows that WARF will go after someone when there is real money involved. That eliminates CIRM from contention, so the California woofing about WARF is for another day.

See also a Feb. 7 IPBiz post with the text:

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation [WARF] sued Intel on Wednesday [Feb. 6] for patent infringement, charging that the Core 2 Duo infringes on a patent granted to University of Wisconsin at Madison researchers in 1998 [US 5,781,752] for a processor design that can break instructions into separate strands for more efficient processing.

Is this the type of suit the IT people think of when saying: Large tech vendors, including Microsoft, IBM and Symantec, have called for patent reform, saying it's too easy for companies with no intention of creating products to buy up patents and file multimillion-dollar infringement lawsuits against other companies.

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Separately, for an expression of paranoia in stem cells:

Ensuring that Patents Don't Block Stem Cell Research

One recalls Noveck's earlier confusion.

Full post as published by IPBiz on February 12, 2008 (boomark / email).