Sony has been sued so many times that they now probably just shrug it off and go about their evening. We wouldn’t be surprised to hear that the suits at Sony have the word ‘lawsuit’ flagged to get picked up by their spam filter. Hopefully this one made it into the inbox, as the new suit makes a pretty big claim.
A California-based company called Parallel Processing filed a suit that claims that Sony’s Cell processor infringes on patent number 5,056,000, otherwise known as “Synchronized Parallel Processing with Shared Memory”. The patent was issued in October of 1991, and describes a device that breaks down programs “into smaller concurrent processes running in different parallel processors” and “resynchronizes the program for faster processing times.” They claim that Sony has caused “irreparable harm and monetary damage” to their company. The suit states that:
“On information and belief, Defendant Sony Corporation of America has infringed and continues to infringe on the ‘000 Patent by making, using, importing, offering for sale and/or selling products among other things, covered by one or more claims of the ‘000 Patent, including, but not limited to, Sony Playstation III [sic].”
The company is asking for damages, legal fee refunds, interest, and the “impounding and destruction” of all of Sony’s Cell processors. Right.
[Via Next Gen]
