Valve gets new patent review from Federal Circuit in game-controller dispute
reuters.com/legal/transactional/valve-gets-ne...
reuters.comPosted Aug 29, 2021, 10:58 PM UTC
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reuters.comI hope the SCUF (now owned by Corsair) patent for having paddles on the back of a controller is thrown out, it really amazes me how simple of an idea can be patented, all it does is stifle innovation.
One of the reasons pretty much all AIO coolers are the same is because Asetek owns the patent for having a pump in the same unit as the cold plate.
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And their anti-consumer version number & force binning scam for their RAM earns them another "Fuck Corsair."
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Still dont know why people buy RAM from companies that dont even make the ram themselves. All you are doing is paying a middle man like corsair. Buy from Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix, etc. Buy your ram direct from the manufacturer so you dont have to deal with this nonsense
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None of those companies sell XMP RAM kits though. But at least Micron has their own sub-brand for that, Crucial, who is my go-to choice for consumer memory.
The rest you're at the mercy of the binning process for XMP, and given that Corsair force bins even completely incompatible ICs into their existing speed bins so they don't have to create new SKUs for each IC change, it's a huge problem. They just change the version number (which makes upgrading down the road almost impossible since you have to match version numbers which most people don't even know about). Currently, their biggest production volume in the 3000-3600 range is Samsung c-die that is the hardest IC in production to bin, with the tightest tolerances, and they force bin it into bins that were used by mostly Samsung b-die previously, which results in about a 50% chance at least one stick can't run XMP, and a 10% chance it doesn't run at all. Oh, and 4.32/4.33, which are c-die, are not qualified by any board vendor on their QVL for any board.
They're literally selling garbage, knowingly, masked behind a version number, using the same sku that at one time was mostly b-die and used to be decent. And they sponsor the hell out of tech YouTubers, and send them only good versions for review, so they keep using the same kit of Corsair RAM that is binned properly to passively push garbage tier RAM to actual consumers who just pick up on name recognition.
It's arguably as bad or worse than Gigabyte's PSU bad press, since Corsair has been doing this for years without being called out, screwing thousands of consumers in the process, but gets overlooked because it won't burn your house down. That and most people never enable XMP anyway, so you automatically have a large portion of users who don't even know they were taken for a ride, because they're just running 2133 and don't know any better.
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My dude. Because those companies have historically not sold RAM directly. They don't have a retail or brand presence. Their partners overclock their RAM and do the legwork to advertise. Should be not buy CPUs from anyone but Global Foundries, or TSMC? No iPhones since Foxconn makes them?
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Asetek's patents were specific enough Arctic got around them with the freezer II.
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They just had to put the pump on the side of the fins, not above it.
Plenty of others have gotten around it too, by just not putting the pump in the same cavity as the fins. This makes them bulkier, but not really any worse functionally. Cooler Master, EK, beQuiet (the pump is inline in one of the tubes), etc have all gotten around it.
Also Corsair stopped using Asetek for the current gen, and uses CoolIT now. And CoolIT got around it by basically walling off the pump so its impeller is in a separate cavity above the cold plate then using a plastic flow guide to get the water to the cold plate, and not sharing the cold plate cavity like the Asetek patent covers.
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Corsair coolit are awfully loud though.
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Didn't say it was perfect, just that they successfully avoided the patents of Asetek with their design (including surviving a court challenge from Asetek). Also the mounting style Corsair uses now necessitates buying an extra metal bracket kit from der8uer for AMD, since the Corsair/CoolIT bracket just clips to the stock plastic AMD cooler mount. But the der8uer kit replaces them with metal, plus allows offsetting so that it more covers the chiplets of Zen2/Zen3 (like the Arctic does, but it's adjustable not fixed, so it can be precisely tweaked), so it's not all bad.
I still prefer Arctic or EK when possible, or Asetek when neither will fit, as the gen6/gen7 are actually quite good compared to the older gen pump designs. EK has an absolutely massive pump block that interferes on some of the ITX boards I build with due to the pump being functionally separate from the cold plate, but sharing a housing (which massively increases size over Asetek pump designs), and some of the cases I use can't fit the super thick rad of the Arctic, so I'll generally use the Phanteks Glacier One MP series for that as it's a gen7 Asetek with the 3000RPM (3600RPM if the liquid hits 60C) PWM pump that goes down to 800RPM for quiet low power operation (though the pump is even silent at 100% PWM, but you can hear it some if it goes into overdrive mode, but the only way I've triggered that was manual testing with no rad fans and the rad under a pillow (just wanted to verify it worked since you can't run this speed manually).
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You get around Asetek's patent by making a chamber for the CPU block and putting the pump in another chamber on top. It makes for a larger, more complex, less efficient design. To match the simpler design you spend more on components which is why many companies just pay royalties to Asetek.
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Asetek owns the patent for having a pump in the same unit as the cold plate.
"pump in the same unit as the cold plate"?
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Define unit
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Huh? Idk, if I had a clue whst this means I wouldn't ask.
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Seems like your question wasn't completely clear to everyone, it happens.
The patents for Asetek coolers include the pump/impeller being directly integrated into the block that sits on the CPU. If others don't want to infringe on these, they need to relocate the pump or design a solution that's technically not integrated like Asetek, e.g. CoolIT has their pumps in a separate piece that sits on top of the block to get around the patent. GN teardown if you're curious.
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I can understand patents being used when there's research involved, in order to provide incentives for research and development etc
What is the point with this kinds of patents though? How much money or time did it cost to "invent" it?
Same with "rectangular/smooth border screens for cellphones"
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or amazon's original ”one click purchase” patent? or patenting a business model?
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I still get a chuckle when someone mentions that Blue Origin (Bezos' rocket company) tried to patent landing a rocket on a barge in the middle of the ocean. It's SOP for Bezos' companies to be patent trolls I guess.
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You can't patent a change of shape unless you can show an unexpected result that wouldn't have come from routine experimentation
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The Back Button is incredibly useful, so the fact that Sony/MS don't already implement this on default controllers... suggests that SCUF is demanding huge licensing fees for this patent squatting.
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Yeah there's a reason why it was an (EXPENSIVE) addon for the ds4 and why it's only on the elite xbone controller.
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Eh, PowerA has back buttons and paddles on some of their controllers and they range from moderately cheaper (e.g. Xbox Enhanced line) to only moderately more expensive (e.g. Fusion) than first party controllers.
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Well I will now never buy anything Corsair. Fuck bullshit patents.
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Corsair actually bought the company that holds this patent back in 2019 (the patent was made in 2013). Of course Corsair is still effectively using said patent it seems so that's not a ton better but I don't know enough about Corsair's patent portfolio to say if they aquire/make patents like these often.
At the very least this isn't patent trolling, it's just a terrible patent that should have never been allowed to begin with.
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It's a bullshit patent with obvious prior art, it's patent trolling.
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Patent trolls typically don't actually make products that use the patents they litigate over. In the case of Ironburg/SCUF they actually do make controllers and even OEM a lot of parts iirc. Ironburg also doesn't seemingly make lawsuits like these very often and I can't imagine any other lawsuits they've made (assuming there are any) amount to any substantial portion of their income. Generally patent trolls exists just to fuck people over with patents
Shitty patents aren't necessarily a sign of patent trolling, this is just another case of loosely defined/obvious ideas somehow getting copyrighted.
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Man, if I stopped buying products from a company cuz they did something slimy, I'd have to go and live in the woods. Not excusing it, just being practical.
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Corsair is not a necessity brand. They can very easily be avoided. Gaming companies need to be on their toes and stay consumer friendly. My boycott to Corsair stands.
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My point is that most all companies will do slimy things if they can get away with it. And they do get away with it. Your boycott may help you feel better about yourself and that's fine, but dont delude yourself into thinking you're gonna impact them.
Anyways, good luck only buying tech products from super ethical companies...
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My possibly shit understanding of patents is that patent owners need to defend the patent to keep it valid. Otherwise if a more blatant patent violation occurs them not making a case for other possible violation can be used against them.
I wouldn't quote me on that though.
Edit: Was thinking of trademarks
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You're thinking of trademarks
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That's trademarks, patents are more the right to stop others from doing stuff. It's why you need prior art to invalidate a patent and anything after the filing doesn't count.
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Trademarks work like you described but patents don't. You don't have to actively defend a patent to maintain it.
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Is Steam Controller is back on the menu, boys?
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Valve has already announced the official dock for the Steam Deck
So Valve should eventually be releasing a new Steam Controller unless they are expecting people to use third-party controllers/mouse+kb which unlikely
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Pretty sure they'll just wait for public feedback on the ergonomics of the deck and then release a controller with similar/better ergonomics and feature parity with the deck.
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Oh, I hadn't heard that. Thanks for the info. Honestly, I have no particular use case for the Steam Deck, but the Steam Controller with its super-customizability is basically my favorite controller. If they were to release a modern version with a better feel/ergonomics I'd be all over that.
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A Steam Controller similar to the old one with its glorious trackpads and gyro, but with the 4 much nicer back buttons of the Steam Deck would be my dream controller. And maybe slightly less stiff shoulder buttons.
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I would love to have scroll wheels in place of shoulder buttons.
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A scroll wheel would be crazy useful, though I'm not sure I'd want it to replace shoulder buttons. Maybe one central just below the joystick and XYAB buttons.
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As long as it still clicks in like a standard scroll wheel there's no lost functionality. You'd probably want the detents in the scrolling to be stiffer than your typical mouse to prevent accidental scrolling when trying to just press it in, and the wheel should be chunkier than on a normal mouse. Or did you have a different reason?
I use the click on my mouse scroll wheel constantly (open link in new tab, close tab that's open, rotate view in 3D modeling software, etc.) with no issues, and it's such a good control method for games that have things like an item bar for your inventory (e.g. Minecraft). Every way I've tried to handle those with controllers is significantly slower.
Maybe you could have a shoulder button with a scroll wheel on it (pushed toward the center of the controller) so you can use the button as typical or reach just a bit to get a scroll wheel.
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This might interest you.
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I'd buy one if I could have two joysticks like a standard controller, in addition to the touch pads. Sometimes they just don't work as well.
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The deck has two joysticks and two pads so if there's ever a Steam controller 2 it'll have those as well for sure
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Doesn't the Steam Deck also have rear buttons? How will this affect that thing?
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I guess Scuff didn't patent 'buttons on the back of a console'. These things are always oddly specific.
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Steam Deck isn't a controller. Patent only covers controllers.
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That's not the case, and not how patents work. For one, if I were to apply for a patent on some aerospace device that works just like an existing kitchen utensil, the examiner is going to deny. Application/industry is largely irrelevant. Not to mention you also can't dodge patents by integrating one device into another device. What you suggest would mean that laptop keyboards don't have to abide by standalone keyboard patents, for example.
Source: have patents (but not a lawyer)
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Xbox Elite controller has back buttons.
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The post literally says Microsoft licenses it. You don't have to be that lazy
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Doesn't the N64 controller have back buttons far predating this with the z button?
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That's a trigger and not a paddle, I believe.
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To those not in the loop, this centers around Valve's use of rear paddles on the Steam Controller.
Ironburg Inventions Ltd. (owned by Corsair) has a patent on rear paddles on game controllers. It's known that even Microsoft pays out to license the patent however Valve did not do so with the Steam Controller and were ordered to pay $4 million in the previous court case. This new appeal centers around prior art found with controllers using rear paddles that dates from 2010 whereas the patent in question is from 2013, it seems they were (incorrectly) not allowed to use this as evidence in the previous court case.
Do note news in other subreddits claim they "won" this case due to the appeal but the case is actually still ongoing. There's a good chance the patent gets overturned now that this prior art is admissible in court though. This news article is from ~2 weeks ago but is still the most recent proper news for this case and was otherwise not posted here in r/hardware.
Edit: Clarifying that the patent is seemingly for rear paddles more than buttons.
i hate bullshit patents.
i'm usually a fan of corsair's older/higher end stuff, but this kind of pisses me off.
valve: enjoy fighting the good fight, and i really hope you keep it up...
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Hardware is nothing compared to Software patents. Hardware patents at least have to provide detailed instructions of how a device works and what it does. Software patents are infamous for having people being sued for random shit all the time. Paying a royalty for access to a patent is fair, suing people is not. And most software patents are so unbelievably vague
Yeah, with most things you don't try to patent something that's obvious given prior art, but with software you patent things because they're obvious given prior art; if you you don't, someone else probably will do that can then sue you for a ridiculous amount of money.
OTOH it's not always software. Apple patented fucking rounded corners on a phone. And sued Samsung over it.
When do Asetek's CLC patents expire?
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Really this should fail the "non-obvious" requirements to get a patent in the first place.
We had a controller, we put buttons on it, yes but we invented putting them um ugh in the back!!
That must not be how it characterized in the patent, otherwise there's the obvious prior art in the N64 controller...
But that's a trigger, not a button. Totally different thing, duh! There's a completely different set of patents for that one of course. ^((/s) ^but ^it's ^probably ^for ^real)
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The real world is what people make it. I have every reason to get mad at people who make it worse.
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Uhh
Why exacly should I not be mad at Corsair?
Yep, I owned 2 commercially produced (by a Mattel owned company) controllers for the OG XBox with 4 programmable back buttons for middle and ring fingers.
They were first available in stores for holiday season way back in 2003, and shortly afterwards for the PS2.
The Gamester FPS Master.
It even had an lcd display to swap buttons on the fly, and choose axis inversion for sticks.
The build quality was fairly rough, but the controller was amazing for the dedicated shooter player, way ahead of it's time in concept.
I rebuilt mine a few times to keep it going.
Ironburg's patent straight up lies, and needs to be revoked so we can get some good innovation in the controller space.
You could send this via email to gabe or someone else @ volvo.
I wonder how Steam Deck got around it having 4 rear buttons.
Probably because it's not a controller I guess. Idk how they would argue controller patent infringement when the controller is part of the gaming unit. You'd have to separate the single unit in legalese to make that argument stick.
The patent shows back paddles instead of buttons. So, Steam Deck’s back buttons are a loophole.
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