“……

In an interview with this newspaper, Mr. Cody Zeller, one of the most well-known lawyers in the United States, confirmed that McLaughlin &Stern and NSWASSERSTEIN & Associates, PLLC, two of the most prominent law firms in New York, have accepted the invitation of iKang and will form the strongest legal team to represent Aikang in the intellectual property infringement case sued by IBM.

McLaughlin & Stern Law Firm, one of the oldest law firms in New York, was founded in the 18th century and has a history of more than 200 years. Cody Zeller is a senior partner at McLaughlin & Stern and specializes in commercial mergers and acquisitions and intellectual property litigation. The largest merger in U.S. history, DuPont's acquisition of ConocoPhillips, has just been concluded, with the legal support of Cody Zeller's team!

……”

This is a report in USA Today about the lawyer team hired by Aikang. Aikang's response was very swift, and on the third day of IBM's lawsuit in New York court, it was immediately formed, and was praised by American newspapers as the most luxurious lawyer litigation team in history to deal with IBM's allegations. Akon isn't just trying to deal with a lawsuit, it's trying to make it a classic crisis marketing.

At the same time, under the guidance and tackling key problems of Aikang, the focus of the media once again focused on the competition between IBM and Aikang. Experts from all walks of life have commented on the possible future trend of this intellectual property dispute case. According to the complaint materials provided by IBM, and the defense materials presented by iKang at the subsequent press conference.

Computer experts generally agree. Even if it constitutes an infringement, Aikang Company is not strict. Even if they lose the lawsuit, the compensation will not exceed $10 million. And IBM wants a court request to ban the sale of ABC series computers in the United States. It's almost a fantasy.

As an emerging force promoting the industrial revolution, iKang was suppressed by IBM, which represented a strong and conservative ruling class. Naturally, the media swarmed in favor of the weak. What's more, IBM's monopoly suspicion has just dissipated, and it can't wait to re-attack its competitors.

This is a clear violation of the clause in the settlement agreement between the Ministry of Justice and IBM that allows competitors to develop. Aikang's lawyer team seized this point and violently attacked IBM and established the evil image of the other party in public opinion.

Sometimes getting involved in a lawsuit isn't always a bad thing, especially if the opponent in the lawsuit is a higher level than you. As long as Aikang continues to entangle with IBM, the names of the two will always appear in the public eye together. If you take IBM as a reference, the evaluation of the strength of its opponent Aikang will immediately rise to the same level.

As for the concern of Aikang's senior management about the impact on sales, within a week of the patent dispute. Sales of the ABC series of computers have indeed declined significantly. However, as this incident was deliberately hyped and amplified by Aikang, the media's attention to it continued to increase, and the possible consequences of the incident were also analyzed and reported in detail. Consumer concerns were quickly dispelled, and sales of the ABC series of computers rebounded.

In particular, the ABC-3 computer, which has attracted the most attention from public opinion, has been called by many media as an advanced computer that even IBM cannot confront head-on and can only resist with small tricks. As a result, there was a strong rebound in the sales of the ABC-3 computer, which was even hotter than before the crisis.

The trial of this kind of patent dispute case will be very long, especially the evidence provided by both parties is very professional, and it will take a long time for the court to collect evidence and analyze. Aikang has already prepared a large amount of legal fees. The upfront costs paid to two well-known law firms alone were as high as $1 million, and the entire lawsuit cost at least $5 million.

So patent lawsuits are really not something that the average small company can afford, especially if your opponent is a giant like IBM. If your own strength is not strong, the other party does not even need to win the lawsuit. As long as it takes time, you can drag a small company to death with huge legal fees. This is also one of the best treasures for industrial giants to deal with small companies, not only in the IT world, but also in other high-tech fields such as biopharmaceuticals. Small companies meet the malicious hunt of giants. The best thing to do is to bow your head and seek reconciliation.

As a large company with a market capitalization of up to 1.2 billion pounds, iKang naturally has a complete set of solutions. Li Xuan only paid a general attention to this matter. Recently, his main focus has been on the restructuring and reorganization of Oriental scientific research institutions. Li Xuan's investment in R&D has always been cost-free, starting with the initial cooperation with CUHK and HKU to establish the Oriental Real Yàn Room. Later, Dongfang Electronics Company has set up R&D centers in Hong Kong, Taipei, Japan, Cambridge, Silicon Valley and other places. Li Xuan's cumulative investment in scientific research has exceeded 100 million US dollars.

It can be said that a large part of the profits of Dongfang Game Innovation Zào is used by him to invest in scientific research, and the total number of scientific researchers in Dongfang Company has exceeded 1,500 people. However, these scientific research institutions also have the problem of decentralized management, such as the Dongfang Shi Yàn Office was established in cooperation with two universities in Hong Kong, and then Dongfang Electronics established a Hong Kong R&D center on its own, so there is a certain overlap and waste of resources.

As a result, Dongfang Electronics Company recently negotiated with two universities and decided to separate the Dongfang Shiyàn Office from the two universities and merge it with various R&D centers under Dongfang Company to establish the Oriental Research Institute, and Li Xuan personally served as the president of the Oriental Research Institute.

"Li Sheng, this is the first professional graphics processor that has just been taped out in Silicon Valley! But the effect is not very ideal, the defects are relatively large, and it needs to be improved!" Zhao Weiming pointed to a small strip chip on the test bench and said to Li Xuan.

The new Oriental Research Institute, with the largest Hong Kong research center of the national model as the main body, is still mainly engaged in integrated circuit design. However, it has gradually expanded from the development of the original ERM architecture to the design of other chips. The graphics processor is one of the recent new achievements of the Oriental Research Institute.

The graphics processing unit (GPU) is a processor that is responsible for the operation of the picture display, and it is also one of the core components of the graphics card. Of course, personal computers in the early 80s were not as powerful as later computers, and most computers did not have independent sound cards and graphics cards, but only a sound chip or display chip instead. Even Dongfang Shi Yàn Room has previously integrated the sound chip module directly into the 6502 processor. This line of thinking is the same as the integrated graphics card in the CPU of later generations, but it lags much behind in performance.

The ABC-3 computer has made many innovations in hardware design, including the first design of a discrete graphics card for a computer. Aikang announced the number of graphics card interfaces for the ABC-3 computer, but it will certainly not release the graphics card design data. On the contrary, it is one of the important selling points of the ABC-3 computer.

But most of the display chips are very backward in performance, and there is no dedicated graphics processor. The graphics card on the ABC-3 computer uses the μPD7200 chip of the Japanese company NEC. This chip is actually a DSP (Digital Signal Processor), not a real GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).

DSP was already around in the early eighties, but the concept of GPUs was not introduced by NVIDIA until the late nineties. Both DSPs and GPUs are designed for high-performance, repetitive, numerically intensive real-time processing operations.

However, GPUs are specifically designed for image processing and are more purposeful than DSPs. All operations on the GPU use floating-point algorithms, and the storage system is actually a two-dimensional segmented storage space. He remembers that the logo of the early graphics processors was the GE chip.

The core of GE chips is four-bit vector floating-point arithmetic, and the chip designer James Clark established SGI (Silicon Valley Graphics) as the core technology became one of the five largest workstation manufacturers in the 80s.

Although Li Xuan doesn't know much about GUP, he still understands these general characteristics, and can formulate a general idea for the R&D team, and the next work needs to be explored slowly by R&D personnel. This graphics processor that has just completed tape-out is the result of in-depth research and development according to the research and development direction he gave.

He doesn't expect his R&D personnel to come up with any earth-shattering products in one go, as long as they can be more professional than the performance of the GNPD7200 chip of NEC company used on the ABC-3 computer, it will meet his expectations.

"Take your time, after all, the previous development of ERM was so smooth, it was just a special case, we can't have such good luck every time!" Li Xuan pinched the small chip in front of him and said.

Constantly finding mistakes and then revising them is the normal rhythm of integrated circuit development. In the past, the ERM architecture was completely plagiarized from the ARM architecture of his previous life, which is why it was possible to develop it so smoothly.

"By the way, we have received a letter of inquiry from the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and they want us to provide some information to cooperate with the investigation of the patent infringement case!" Zhao Weiming suddenly mentioned another matter.

"Hehe, then cooperate with them, I guess there will be trouble in the future. When necessary, we have to send one or two colleagues who can speak well to the United States to appear in court to help Ai Kang!" Li Xuan said with a smile.

The Patent and Trademark Office's determination of infringement actually had no impact on the court, but Aikang still filed an application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. This speed will be faster than that of the court, and if the result is determined to be favorable to Aikang, public opinion pressure can be formed in advance.

"The patent infringement investigation is still relatively mild, and the real thing is to accuse you of stealing trade secrets! If you get into that trouble, the FBI may directly intervene!" Zhao Weiming has been in the United States for many years and is no stranger to these things.

"So American lawyers make a lot of money, and in order not to get into trouble, they have to watch everything they do!" Li Xuan said with a smile.

When recruiting people, Oriental Company will sign a liability waiver agreement with employees. For new recruits, especially those recruited from other companies, the management of emails, meeting minutes and other materials within six months of joining the company will be very strict, and all work records need to be reviewed by the lawyers of the legal department and properly kept. (To be continued......)