> If you fail to comply with our demands by the specified deadline, Synaptics will seek monetary
compensation from you in the amount of US$25,000 to recoup the costs and effort required to
create the attached documentation of your infringing acts.
Obviously this is intended as a scare tactic, but, surely that could never hold up in court? Surely the burden of proof is on the owner of the patents to prove that someone's work is infringing, and you can't then say "We are charging the defendant to prove that we have a valid case against them." ?
show comments
hnlmorg
> I will also be sending to you our demand for substantial monetary compensation to recoup the cost and effort required to create such documentation of your infringing acts.
There is no universe in which this is a reasonable response.
show comments
kieranl
DisplayLink is dying due to high DDR prices. Dock companies are cancelling their display link portfolios due to the unfavorable economics.
Good riddance if this is how OSS is treated by synaptics.
Most recent thunderbolt docks and usb4 docks have good display support, and fallback to DisplayPort alt mode if the host does not support tbt4. Which is much better supported over type-c. Intel and AMD upstream host support.
show comments
xxpor
I didn't think reverse engineering itself was a violation of a patent? The entire point of a patent is the public disclosure of the mechanism of an invention for the exclusive right to market that invention. Therefore arguing that reverse engineering is a violation of a patent is definitionally incorrect. They should be arguing it's a violation of trade secrets. Of course, they'd lose on that argument too because clean room reverse engineering of a trade secret is fine because you definitionally don't have a patent on it! That's the patent vs trade secret tradeoff!
show comments
cbdumas
DisplayLink is a "clever" software workaround to hardware limitations that shouldn't exist anymore and I hope it goes away. When I got stuck with a DisplayLink dock at work it caused no end of audio issues when connecting and disconnecting, the driver had to be restarted all the time, it was a pain
show comments
mijoharas
My company used to have some display link docks, which I was unable to use due to bugs in the Linux implementations.
For a while I'd keep an eye on updates to see if they'd been fixed but they never were before we moved office.
I'm going to be quite sure we don't get any more in any future offices (we don't have them at our current office)
Why actually, given that even smartphones can drive Displayport alt mode over USB-C, and tablets can speak full Thunderbolt/USB 4? Is it cheaper to implement in dock and/or laptop hardware?
luckystarr
Is DisplayLink a company owned by Synaptics or just a file in a portfolio? How do they make money from DisplayLink except from selling the docks? Licensing?
show comments
cowlevel
This is why good useful free projects are hosted on onion sites.
theturtletalks
>> An independently written or clean-room implementation does not necessarily avoid patent infringement if it implements patented inventions.
Can someone explain this to me? Isn't this the whole premise of reverse engineering?
show comments
gwittel
It’s also disturbing they have the gall to demand tens of thousands of dollars for the task of specifying which of their 100+ maybe relevant patents he’s infringing.
Does UK patent law somehow work differently?
show comments
genxy
Synaptics should lose all access to Linux.
show comments
aussieguy1234
When a company does something like this, do the right thing and choose not to buy their products or do business with them.
If you use any of their older products, it may be time to migrate away to more modern solutions, ideally ones made by companies that don't send legal threats to open source developers.
0xbadcafebee
I finally upgraded all my gear to USB3.1Gen2+ so I no longer need to use DisplayLink. It's so nice. No more messing around with weird broken drivers. I just plug things in and they work.
show comments
saghm
> The letter continued to claim that Lothian would be "single-handedly eviscerating DisplayLink's competitive advantage in this crowded market by educating our competitors and other third parties as to how we implement our proprietary technology"
If one guy can reverse-engineer everything with an LLM and some free time, I'm pretty sure their competitors can as well, and they won't be doing it out in the open like this guy was...
show comments
denkmoon
I'll never fail to be surprised by the wide eyed naivety of some programmers. There was no other reasonably expected outcome. If I were to take on a project to improve open source capabilities for a proprietary piece of hardware or software I wouldn't be putting my name to it, you're just asking for liability.
petterroea
I've never had a pc that used displaylink, but less fortunate friends in corporate jobs describe a sinking feeling of dread when realising what their laptop has.
Bad technology that doesn't deserve to exist, it seems. This is the kind of tech where it's better to finish off the RE work and release it anonymously to harm them. Adversarial interoperability, as Cory Doctorow would put it
matt3210
Lets all vibe / reverse engineer 30 replacements and make it open source
viraptor
I wish Synaptics a very "find this work fully completed by someone on https://gitflic.ru/" day.
techteach00
I support Federico Faggins company
j45
At some point there needs to be a test of when software is related to owning hardware.
Some questions that come to mind are:
Do you actually own the hardware?
Do you stop owning the hardware, meaning you're not allowed or able to use it once the company that's sold it to you stops providing or updating hardware?
Does every piece of hardware come with a guarantee that it will work on every piece of hardware that it's attached to forever?
These are just a few of the really troubling questions when people forget that software has to run on hardware. And the closer the software is to the core operation of a piece of hardware and equipment, the more topics like right to repair or right to maintain or right to optimize come up.
I never thought that a video card replacement driver would make me think of companies that are limiting Farmers from repairing and updating their own tractors.
show comments
gsich
>Yes, you should be concerned. Very concerned, actually
Unbelievable mafia tactics from those clowns.
kotaKat
"Your actions are potentially putting tens of millions of
dollars of yearly corporate revenue at risk."
Seriously, use OCuLink. It costs $15 for the pcie card, $10 for a cable, and $100 for a GFX card dock, and a PSU.
OCuLink doesn't even use drivers. It's literally just a PCIE passthrough. All usual tools apply, whereas DisplayLink encrypts all data, so a big fuckyou for getting logs.
Quit giving trash companies pounds of money for abuse at scale.
sedatk
Available only to subscribers, so, most of HN can't see this page I guess.
EDIT: Fixed now.
show comments
Beijinger
I predict a high chance that they lose this patent. Mark my words.
According to patent prosecution records, the independent claims for GB2484736 originally lacked any network transport limitations and were deemed entirely unpatentable against the prior art listed above.
To get the patent granted, DisplayLink’s attorneys amended the claims to specifically add delivery of the display data over a "general-purpose data network." The validity challenge relies on proving that adding a general-purpose transport layer (like USB or Ethernet) to existing image-compression methodologies was an obvious step and completely unoriginal in 2010, given the widespread existence of USB monitors and network-attached graphics at the time.
show comments
joshuafuller
The most disturbing part is that a single developer, with some AI assistance, was able to improve hardware support that the manufacturer couldn't or wouldn't fix. Instead of embracing that work, Synaptics threatened to financially ruin him. As AI lowers the barrier to reverse engineering and interoperability, I suspect we'll see a lot more companies reaching for lawyers when their technical moats start disappearing.
> If you fail to comply with our demands by the specified deadline, Synaptics will seek monetary compensation from you in the amount of US$25,000 to recoup the costs and effort required to create the attached documentation of your infringing acts.
Obviously this is intended as a scare tactic, but, surely that could never hold up in court? Surely the burden of proof is on the owner of the patents to prove that someone's work is infringing, and you can't then say "We are charging the defendant to prove that we have a valid case against them." ?
> I will also be sending to you our demand for substantial monetary compensation to recoup the cost and effort required to create such documentation of your infringing acts.
There is no universe in which this is a reasonable response.
DisplayLink is dying due to high DDR prices. Dock companies are cancelling their display link portfolios due to the unfavorable economics.
Good riddance if this is how OSS is treated by synaptics.
Most recent thunderbolt docks and usb4 docks have good display support, and fallback to DisplayPort alt mode if the host does not support tbt4. Which is much better supported over type-c. Intel and AMD upstream host support.
I didn't think reverse engineering itself was a violation of a patent? The entire point of a patent is the public disclosure of the mechanism of an invention for the exclusive right to market that invention. Therefore arguing that reverse engineering is a violation of a patent is definitionally incorrect. They should be arguing it's a violation of trade secrets. Of course, they'd lose on that argument too because clean room reverse engineering of a trade secret is fine because you definitionally don't have a patent on it! That's the patent vs trade secret tradeoff!
DisplayLink is a "clever" software workaround to hardware limitations that shouldn't exist anymore and I hope it goes away. When I got stuck with a DisplayLink dock at work it caused no end of audio issues when connecting and disconnecting, the driver had to be restarted all the time, it was a pain
My company used to have some display link docks, which I was unable to use due to bugs in the Linux implementations.
For a while I'd keep an eye on updates to see if they'd been fixed but they never were before we moved office.
I'm going to be quite sure we don't get any more in any future offices (we don't have them at our current office)
Might be related to the acquisition by onsemi:
https://www.onsemi.com/company/newsroom/news-and-insights/on...
Huh, DisplayLink is still around?
Why actually, given that even smartphones can drive Displayport alt mode over USB-C, and tablets can speak full Thunderbolt/USB 4? Is it cheaper to implement in dock and/or laptop hardware?
Is DisplayLink a company owned by Synaptics or just a file in a portfolio? How do they make money from DisplayLink except from selling the docks? Licensing?
This is why good useful free projects are hosted on onion sites.
>> An independently written or clean-room implementation does not necessarily avoid patent infringement if it implements patented inventions.
Can someone explain this to me? Isn't this the whole premise of reverse engineering?
It’s also disturbing they have the gall to demand tens of thousands of dollars for the task of specifying which of their 100+ maybe relevant patents he’s infringing.
Does UK patent law somehow work differently?
Synaptics should lose all access to Linux.
When a company does something like this, do the right thing and choose not to buy their products or do business with them.
If you use any of their older products, it may be time to migrate away to more modern solutions, ideally ones made by companies that don't send legal threats to open source developers.
I finally upgraded all my gear to USB3.1Gen2+ so I no longer need to use DisplayLink. It's so nice. No more messing around with weird broken drivers. I just plug things in and they work.
> The letter continued to claim that Lothian would be "single-handedly eviscerating DisplayLink's competitive advantage in this crowded market by educating our competitors and other third parties as to how we implement our proprietary technology"
If one guy can reverse-engineer everything with an LLM and some free time, I'm pretty sure their competitors can as well, and they won't be doing it out in the open like this guy was...
I'll never fail to be surprised by the wide eyed naivety of some programmers. There was no other reasonably expected outcome. If I were to take on a project to improve open source capabilities for a proprietary piece of hardware or software I wouldn't be putting my name to it, you're just asking for liability.
I've never had a pc that used displaylink, but less fortunate friends in corporate jobs describe a sinking feeling of dread when realising what their laptop has.
Bad technology that doesn't deserve to exist, it seems. This is the kind of tech where it's better to finish off the RE work and release it anonymously to harm them. Adversarial interoperability, as Cory Doctorow would put it
Lets all vibe / reverse engineer 30 replacements and make it open source
I wish Synaptics a very "find this work fully completed by someone on https://gitflic.ru/" day.
I support Federico Faggins company
At some point there needs to be a test of when software is related to owning hardware.
Some questions that come to mind are:
Do you actually own the hardware?
Do you stop owning the hardware, meaning you're not allowed or able to use it once the company that's sold it to you stops providing or updating hardware?
Does every piece of hardware come with a guarantee that it will work on every piece of hardware that it's attached to forever?
These are just a few of the really troubling questions when people forget that software has to run on hardware. And the closer the software is to the core operation of a piece of hardware and equipment, the more topics like right to repair or right to maintain or right to optimize come up.
I never thought that a video card replacement driver would make me think of companies that are limiting Farmers from repairing and updating their own tractors.
>Yes, you should be concerned. Very concerned, actually
Unbelievable mafia tactics from those clowns.
"Your actions are potentially putting tens of millions of dollars of yearly corporate revenue at risk."
https://static.lwn.net/images/pdf/Cease_and_Desist_Notice_Mi...
Fuck you, Synaptics.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50363968
Seriously, use OCuLink. It costs $15 for the pcie card, $10 for a cable, and $100 for a GFX card dock, and a PSU.
OCuLink doesn't even use drivers. It's literally just a PCIE passthrough. All usual tools apply, whereas DisplayLink encrypts all data, so a big fuckyou for getting logs.
Quit giving trash companies pounds of money for abuse at scale.
Available only to subscribers, so, most of HN can't see this page I guess.
EDIT: Fixed now.
I predict a high chance that they lose this patent. Mark my words.
https://lkml.rescloud.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/2610.1/1...
According to patent prosecution records, the independent claims for GB2484736 originally lacked any network transport limitations and were deemed entirely unpatentable against the prior art listed above.
To get the patent granted, DisplayLink’s attorneys amended the claims to specifically add delivery of the display data over a "general-purpose data network." The validity challenge relies on proving that adding a general-purpose transport layer (like USB or Ethernet) to existing image-compression methodologies was an obvious step and completely unoriginal in 2010, given the widespread existence of USB monitors and network-attached graphics at the time.
The most disturbing part is that a single developer, with some AI assistance, was able to improve hardware support that the manufacturer couldn't or wouldn't fix. Instead of embracing that work, Synaptics threatened to financially ruin him. As AI lowers the barrier to reverse engineering and interoperability, I suspect we'll see a lot more companies reaching for lawyers when their technical moats start disappearing.