
Intel Fires Warning Shot at Qualcomm and Microsoft in X86 Birthday Blog Post - rbanffy
https://hothardware.com/news/intel-fires-shot-at-microsoft-qualcomm-with-x86-birthday-blog-post
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thomasjames
Would the Qualcomm chip have hardware hooks for X86 emulation? If so that
would open up some legal issues depending on what they were, and how similar
they were to Intel hardware patents, but it seems unlikely. In software,
however, this has been done before without legal issue. Intel itself even
touted the proprietary libhoudini as their answer to large ARM NDK codebase on
Android when Intel was trying to compete in the smartphone/tablet space.
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13005303/how-does-
native...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13005303/how-does-native-
android-code-written-for-arm-run-on-x86) I suppose ARM backed by Softbank and
Qualcomm could argue for the right to perform binary translation of X86 on ARM
citing Intel's own precedent in the reverse. If they fail, they could
countersue for damages accumulated during time Intel was doing the exact same
thing to ARM on the mobile platform. Seems like a dead end all the way around.

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AdmiralAsshat
Isn't AMD64 a _spec_? How would you sue an organization for writing something
that emulates a standard?

~~~
tyingq
Patent infringement of Intel's 338 patent.
[http://www.cpushack.com/2012/09/06/intel-vs-the-world-
the-33...](http://www.cpushack.com/2012/09/06/intel-vs-the-world-
the-338-patent/)

I believe this is the main one they've used in the past to sue Cyrix,
Transmeta, and other x86 clones.

Not arguing that makes sense for software emulation, but it seems to be the
threat they are waving.

~~~
tiredwired
Would that 1990 patent be expired by now?

~~~
xoa
If not it should be very close. It's pre-1995 (priority date 1985, Filing
1988, Publication 1990) [1], so it'd be the longer of 20 years from filing
date or 17 from date of issue as the basic time. However, there are
compensatory adjustments for certain delays in issuance that could apply,
Intel could possibly have submarined it to some extent (pre-WTO Uruguay
Round), and #5,321,836 looks related [2]. I vaguely remember there have been
issues with uneven expiration around the world for some older stuff too. So I
have no idea exactly all that would add up, it'd be neat if the FSF or EFF or
someone had done some calculations on it. Still, it's definitely an
interesting question, we should relatively soon be approaching the point
where, even taking into account 1990s IP extension shenanigans, all patents to
tech from that era will expire, and expiration will become a lot more regular
once the WTO-normalized ones are all that's left. There was a pretty rapid
curve of basic developments in the 90s and early 00s, and as all that becomes
available over the next decade there might be some interesting new
possibilities in development.

1\. [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-
bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/4972338)

2\. [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect2=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-
bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&d=PALL&RefSrch=yes&Query=PN/5321836)

