

Patriot Scientific acquires Chuck Moore's patents including shboom - jacquesm
http://patriotscientific.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=231&Itemid=101

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jacquesm
Some background information, Shboom was a very advanced chip in its time, iirc
the first one to execute a high level language directly. There are some
questions about the value of the patents on this chip because it is very well
possible that it could invalidate some of SUNs patents on their java
processors.

With trivial modifications the Shboom will run java bytecode directly.

Maybe this is a prelude to patriotscientific going after Oracle? The timing is
certainly nice. And patriot scientific has a bit of a 'history'.

~~~
wmf
Too bad Sun canceled its Java processors years ago because they were crap.
It's not clear that there's any value in these patents.

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A440
Separately, I think someone has misunderstood Patriot's press release. The
company didn't acquire Moore's patents; they've always owned the patents. They
licensed them to another company.

Patriot and another company, Technology Properties Limited (TPL), are co-
owners of Moore's patents. Both Patriot and TPL make their money by licensing
those patent rights to other companies. The recent press announcement from
Patriot merely says they've signed up yet another new customer.

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jacquesm
You're right, apparently they've got roughly 50 such licensees now.

Apologies!

------
A440
Contrary to popular opinion, ShBoom does not, nor did it ever, execute any
high-level langauge directly. It's far from being a Java processor. Yes, it's
stack-based, but so are some other (unsuccessful) processors. There's a good
reason why there are no Java processors in the world.

That doesn't mean ShBoom is bad or useless or that the patents have no value.
It's just not the miracle some might be hoping for.

~~~
jacquesm
[http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-
appl...](http://www.allbusiness.com/technology/software-services-
applications/7249358-1.html)

[http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Evolve+Software+to+represent+P...](http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Evolve+Software+to+represent+Patriot+Scientifics+ShBoom...-a018113780)

I might be misinterpreting these then, but those seem to be fairly clear
statements to me.

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tylersperry
I do not think those words mean what you think they mean.

Specifically, it's a press release about the purchase of _a_ license. One of
the parties mentioned as an owner of the patent portfolio, TPL, has claimed
this before, so there's no real news here.

Chuck Moore has a page (<http://www.colorforth.com/vTPL.htm>) on the different
opinions about ownership. It doesn't appear to have been recently updated to
include a transfer of ownership. On the contrary, it indicates things are
where they've been for a while: Chuck hasn't received any royalties on the
portfolio and the ownership issue is a matter of legal wrangling.

~~~
jacquesm
It appears they more or less stole the stuff from him, that's where the
'history' I referred to above came from.

I completely misinterpreted the press release, see above.

