If you are manufacturing notebooks and you are using hardware that needs to be cooled down occasionally, you may be in the crosshairs of IPventure, which claims patent rights to an approach that is common in all notebooks today. For now, the company appears to be establishing its case by suing Fujitsu and Lenovo over the use of its invention in the Lifebook and Thinkpad series of products.
Effective cooling of semiconductors is one of the big mysteries every time electrons travel and heat is generated. There isn’t a week in which we do not see novel approaches how to prevent or remove heat from a computer system. However, IPventure, a company which acquires patents and licenses them to other organizations, may have the rights to a broad patent that applies to virtually every basic computer cooling system in the market.
Illustration from the 599 patent
The company claims that two patents are affected. Patent 7,506,190, awarded in March 2009, and patent 7,937,599, awarded in May of this year. Both patents describe “thermal and power management for computer systems.” Both patents describe a similar approach (whereas the 599 patent is much more detailed than the 190 patent) and boil down to a reduction of the processor speed as soon as the fan can’t maintain a reasonable operating temperature within a notebook enclosure by itself. In IPventure’s words:
“The invention monitors a processor’s activity and its temperature. When there is no activity for the processor, a slow clock frequency is used, thereby saving power and lowering the thermal heat produced by the processor. On the other hand, when there is activity for the processor, a fast clock frequency is used. However, when prolonged activity (i.e., sustained fast clock frequency) causes the processor’s temperature to become dangerously high for proper operation, the clock frequency is reduced so as to maintain processing speed at a reduced speed while preventing overheating.“
While this clearly has been a novel approach at some point, it is questionable if it was novel when the original patent claimed by IPventure was filed on June 22, 2007 and there may be a good chance that prior art could invalidate both of its patents.
It is always interesting to see how some IP firms tend to paint a picture of the intent of protecting innovation, but we frequently see patents being updated with the sole purpose of filing patent infringement suits. In this case, IPventure was granted its patent on May 3, 2011 and the suit was filed on July 5. That is barely enough time for contacting possibly licensees, let alone negotiating a license deal.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
