Some time ago I pointed out that asking an engineer about patent infringement was silly inasmuch as matters of patent infringement are the province of lawyers and their hired experts. This notion that the existence of SATA implies infringement of 336 is a perfect example of three fundamentally different ways of looking at the same thing.

Computer systems have contained multiple clocks since I was a little boy. SATA is merely a synchronous communications link designed to replace the parallel link used for many years with ATA (IDE) disk drives and other devices. To an engineer, the idea that support for SATA infringes on 336 in and of itself is incredibly naive and stupid. To an engineer, computers were using serial communication mechanisms that involved separate clocks as far back as the teletype. NCR Century mainframes used high speed synchronous serial communications to talk to disk and tape controllers and this was old technology when they made a special DMA mastering chip, the SIC, to talk to those links as part of the NCR/32 chipset from which various computers were built in the early 80s. How do you suppose Ethernet works? Basically, serial communications involving timing signals, or clocks, other than the CPU clock were common practice in computer system design back when Chuck was still learning to program. So, to an engineer, the statement quoted from the ITC filing... "<The SATA communication system utilizes embedded timing signals, which indicates the presence of a second clock which is independent of the CPU clock.>"... is true, but was also true of computers designed, built, used, and scrapped for junk long before Chuck started designing hardware... and therefore, to an engineer, it is devoid of meaning in and of itself with respect to infringement of a relatively recent patent. To an engineer, if simply using SATA infringes, then using RS232 serial lines (introduced in 1962) or Ethernet (introduced in 1980) or an old NCR system should seemingly infringe too, which would be absurd.

To a lawyer, and to his hired experts, what matters is not likely to be the same sort of Truth as an engineer would be seeking. After all, the engineer must make things that work in the real world, and BS does not pass that test. On the other hand, the lawyer must make arguments that work in court, where BS and obfuscation must be of practical use or lawyers would not generate so much of those things as they regularly do. So, while an engineer could not make the above statement with a straight face in the context of the 336 patent, a lawyer or a lawyer's expert may very well do so. One might hope that TPL made more rational assertions about infringement than this one, but again all that is necessary is what works in court.

To a person hoping to make some money from a patent, what matters is hope. But, as Ron points out, a lawyer's BS is just that and while it may make entertaining reading it is a poor foundation for hope. And, as always, objective logic and engineering Truth seem to have little to do with the process, so what will matter is which passel of lawyerly BS prevails with whoever is trying the facts and the law. One thing is certain: The lawyer is paid, whether prevailing or not.