Xilinx sends lawyers after online educators.

[EEVblog]

I spent most of my career as a solo consultant.   So I *had* to know the basics of IP law and contracts.  I have a number of books on intellectual property law intended for consultants and entrepeneurs including  "West's Business Law".   I suspect the people you refer to have not read *anything* on the subject.

The fact that someone does not get a C&D does not mean they won't.   And they may well get one and not freak out the way the guy in the start of the thread did.  It's not as if they have to stop what they are doing.  They just need to insert an acknowledgement that the trademark belongs to someone else.   You've probably seen them, but didn't understand enough IP law to know why they were there.

The loss of a trademark only happens when someone starts using it, the owner sues and the infringer shows that there was a long history of the company failing to enforce the trademark.   And that is "game over" for the trademark owner.  There is no "do over" allowed.  The trademark is now in the public domain and *anyone* can use it for anything they want. Sending out those C&D letters shows active attempts at enforcement.  In a case like this merely keeping a record of sending the letter is probably all that they would need to do.

In short, what you see on YouTube only proves that it is on YouTube.  It proves *nothing* else.

As I pointed out previously the cure is trivial.  It's an explicit acknowledgement of trademark ownership. That can be a single line of text at the bottom of a title screen.

Nope. In this case Xilinx have said that having their logo next to their competitors is hugely damaging to their brand and they are demanding him to remove all content.

Funny how there are literally millions of examples (which is standard industry practice BTW) were people put out educational content like this and none of the other companies go after them, nor do they lose their trademarks because they haven't enforced them. Normative Fair Use, look it up, you don't have the actively defend against that or lose your trademark, that's not true.
Xilinx are being complete dicks.

[langwadt]

I spent most of my career as a solo consultant.   So I *had* to know the basics of IP law and contracts.  I have a number of books on intellectual property law intended for consultants and entrepeneurs including  "West's Business Law".   I suspect the people you refer to have not read *anything* on the subject.

The fact that someone does not get a C&D does not mean they won't.   And they may well get one and not freak out the way the guy in the start of the thread did.  It's not as if they have to stop what they are doing.  They just need to insert an acknowledgement that the trademark belongs to someone else.   You've probably seen them, but didn't understand enough IP law to know why they were there.

The loss of a trademark only happens when someone starts using it, the owner sues and the infringer shows that there was a long history of the company failing to enforce the trademark.   And that is "game over" for the trademark owner.  There is no "do over" allowed.  The trademark is now in the public domain and *anyone* can use it for anything they want. Sending out those C&D letters shows active attempts at enforcement.  In a case like this merely keeping a record of sending the letter is probably all that they would need to do.

In short, what you see on YouTube only proves that it is on YouTube.  It proves *nothing* else.

As I pointed out previously the cure is trivial.  It's an explicit acknowledgement of trademark ownership. That can be a single line of text at the bottom of a title screen.

Nope. In this case Xilinx have said that having their logo next to their competitors is hugely damaging to their brand and they are demanding him to remove all content.

Funny how there are literally millions of examples (which is standard industry practice BTW) were people put out educational content like this and none of the other companies go after them, nor do they lose their trademarks because they haven't enforced them. Normative Fair Use, look it up, you don't have the actively defend against that or lose your trademark, that's not true.
Xilinx are being complete dicks.

the way big corps usually work I think  it is more likely a case of Xilinx needing to tell their law firm that they pay them
to protect their trademarks not to ruin it by acting like dicks

[a59d1]

Why does he have to comply with them? Are they threatening to sue?

[EEVblog]

Why does he have to comply with them?

He doesn't, he's free to continue do anything he wants, they won't come around with guns and force him to stop.
And they are free to sue him or anyone else at any time they please for anything what so ever. Until he compelled to do something by a court order, he has not done anything illegal and does not need to stop it.

Are they threatening to sue?

Yes, that's what the lawyers are for, and they have threatened as much by saying that he has caused harm to their brand, that's the first salvo.

I'd go as far to say that it's clear they do not like his courses and they are trying to take him down and protect their "authorised" course providers. No actual evidence of this of course, but it seems pretty obvious, which is why it's likely you won't see them go after anyone else.

[rhb]

Nope. In this case Xilinx have said that having their logo next to their competitors is hugely damaging to their brand and they are demanding him to remove all content.

Funny how there are literally millions of examples (which is standard industry practice BTW) were people put out educational content like this and none of the other companies go after them, nor do they lose their trademarks because they haven't enforced them. Normative Fair Use, look it up, you don't have the actively defend against that or lose your trademark, that's not true.
Xilinx are being complete dicks.

Well, Xilinx can demand whatever they wish, but that does not mean they will get it.  Of course, google is involved, so anything is possible.  But I can't see a court of law siding with Xilinx.  That would require that the courts let the loser suppress  product comparisons.  A good friend of mine is a lawyer from a family of lawyers going back over 150 years.  I'll ask him to get me some citations from American case law.

There is no basis for the allegation that having the logos next to each other is damaging to either brand.  This is idiot junior lawyer BS.  Xilinx can demand an acknowledgement that they own the trademarks.   But that is all.  I did not become a lawyer because I did not want to deal with such people.

If I were the presenter, I'd edit out all mention of Xilinx and focus on the Altera line.  Except to say that Xilinx objected to being included and are therefore omitted.  I'd also send a copy of the Xilinx letter to slashdot, the register, wired, EDN and a few other major tech news outlets.  With a CC to the Xilinx CEO of course.

I did not watch more than a couple of minutes of the video because it struck me as a severe overreaction.  Some questions:

Where is the presenter located?

Does he hold an academic post?

What other work has he done on the subject of FPGAs e.g. books or papers?

In light of recent google demonetizing actions relative to EEVblog and other technical video blogs, it may be time to launch an alternative platform and remove all the EEVblog content from YouTube.  Given the heavy weighting that google gives EEVblog references, that might get google's attention.  The EEVblog audience is a valuable property.  Quite aside from being an amazing group of people.

[EEVblog]

Ok, I now have more information on this.
Xilinx are upset at their logo being used in videos on a third party website course provider by another author which Robert also advertises on his Fedeval website (not Youtube). They have not asked Robert to remove his own material.
C&D letters were sent to both Robert and the third party course provider, and Xilinx have said they want the logo removed, and that the presence of the logo has caused "substanital harm" to Xilinx.
It seems as though they are able to re-upload the videos with the logo removed or blurred out, and (I'm guessing) have no issue (or know they have no legal leg to stand on) with incidental use of the Xilinx name being spoken or otherwise shown in the videos.

So as I suspected, it seems like Xilinx are trying to protect their official big course creators and are using their logo as a means to do that.

The problem here is the dick move of engaging lawyers with minimal to no information what the actual issue is, instead of just contacting the authors direct with an issue they had.

It is clear they are not protecting their actual trademark here, the official intent is to ensure that people don't think that any unathorised online courses are confused with official Xilinx approved courses. The real reason is undoubtedly that they don't like the unofficial courses, and the logo  trademark is an easy way to screw with the little providers.
Perhaps a complaint was made by one of the official content prodivers about these "unofficial" low cost courses undercutting their multi-thousand dollar courses, and Xilinx are trying to in turn protect them. I'd put money on this as I've seen it happen with other companies.
I'd bet that Xilinx hope the small "unofficial" providers get in a huff and simply remove all their material and never do it again. That was the point engaging the lawyer.

[EEVblog]

But I can't see a court of law siding with Xilinx.  That would require that the courts let the loser suppress  product comparisons.  A good friend of mine is a lawyer from a family of lawyers going back over 150 years.  I'll ask him to get me some citations from American case law.

It doesn't make any difference what the court ruling would be because it would never get that far because Robert would not be able to afford the costs in defending such a case that Xilinx with their deep pockets could make drag on for years. That's how it works and Xilinx know it.

[EEVblog]

In light of recent google demonetizing actions relative to EEVblog and other technical video blogs, it may be time to launch an alternative platform and remove all the EEVblog content from YouTube.  Given the heavy weighting that google gives EEVblog references, that might get google's attention.  The EEVblog audience is a valuable property.  Quite aside from being an amazing group of people.

LOL, the EEVblog means half a bees nat to Google or Youtube.
The demonetising was a bit of a pain, but it's been solved now, I haven't had a video demonetised in a long time now.

[langwadt]

Ok, I now have more information on this.
Xilinx are upset at their logo being used in videos on a third party website course provider by another author which Robert also advertises on his Fedeval website (not Youtube). They have not asked Robert to remove his own material.
C&D letters were sent to both Robert and the third party course provider, and Xilinx have said they want the logo removed, and that the presence of the logo has caused "substanital harm" to Xilinx.
It seems as though they are able to re-upload the videos with the logo removed or blurred out, and (I'm guessing) have no issue (or know they have no legal leg to stand on) with incidental use of the Xilinx name being spoken or otherwise shown in the videos.

So as I suspected, it seems like Xilinx are trying to protect their official big course creators and are using their logo as a means to do that.

The problem here is the dick move of engaging lawyers with minimal to no information what the actual issue is, instead of just contacting the authors direct with an issue they had.

It is clear they are not protecting their actual trademark here, the official intent is to ensure that people don't think that any unathorised online courses are confused with official Xilinx approved courses. The real reason is undoubtedly that they don't like the unofficial courses, and the logo  trademark is an easy way to screw with the little providers.
Perhaps a complaint was made by one of the official content prodivers about these "unofficial" low cost courses undercutting their multi-thousand dollar courses, and Xilinx are trying to in turn protect them.
I'd bet my bottom dollar that Xilinx hope the small "unofficial" providers get in a huff and simply remove all their material and never do it again. That was the point engaging the lawyer.

sure it isn't just Xilinx's law firm acting like YouTube's copyright violation bot  ?

[EEVblog]

sure it isn't just Xilinx's law firm acting like YouTube's copyright violation bot  ?

I doubt they'd have an active mandate to go out and search for content that competes against Xilinx's official partners.
Occam's razor, it's more likely that one of these companies found these courses that are 1/10th the price and complained.
https://www.xilinx.com/training/atp.html

[rhb]

But I can't see a court of law siding with Xilinx.  That would require that the courts let the loser suppress  product comparisons.  A good friend of mine is a lawyer from a family of lawyers going back over 150 years.  I'll ask him to get me some citations from American case law.

It doesn't make any difference what the court ruling would be because it would never get that far because Robert would not be able to afford the costs in defending such a case that Xilinx with their deep pockets could make drag on for years. That's how it works and Xilinx know it.

That can be a very expensive gambit to play against a good lawyer.  If  Robert's lawyer can make a case for malice, it can lead to rather considerable penalties.  While lawyers can drag such things out for decades, good ones don't have to do a lot of work.

In the end it comes down to what legal rules apply.  I'm familiar with US law.  Generally you have to sue in the defendants jurisdiction.  This is why contracts commonly specify what jurisdiction disputes are to be settled in.

The sum total of all the electronics related videos might be a different story.  Frankly I neither know nor care.  I much prefer books over videos.  It has to be unavailable as a book before I will watch a video.

But what can I say.  I was the guy in the 2nd row with his feet over the back of the first row chair eating oranges through the entire lecture.  I'd already read the text book cover to cover and was just there to interrogate the instructor on minor details not well explained in the text.  I had one instructor who thought I was goofing off.  So he peppered me with questions for a couple of weeks.  I always knew the answer, so eventually he left me alone.

Years later we discussed it.  He'd never run into anyone who read all their text books cover to cover within a few weeks of the start of classes.

[langwadt]

sure it isn't just Xilinx's law firm acting like YouTube's copyright violation bot  ?

I doubt they'd have an active mandate to go out and search for content that competes against Xilinx's official partners.
Occam's razor, it's more likely that one of these companies found these courses that are 1/10th the price and complained.
https://www.xilinx.com/training/atp.html

but they may have a mandate to go after content that show Xilinx logos in a way that they think could be misunderstood
to be official

[EEVblog]

It doesn't make any difference what the court ruling would be because it would never get that far because Robert would not be able to afford the costs in defending such a case that Xilinx with their deep pockets could make drag on for years. That's how it works and Xilinx know it.

That can be a very expensive gambit to play against a good lawyer.  If  Robert's lawyer can make a case for malice, it can lead to rather considerable penalties.  While lawyers can drag such things out for decades, good ones don't have to do a lot of work.

He'd still go bankrupt before he could win the case either way, it's going to costs several hundred thousand dollars.
Proving "malice" would be much more difficult than you think, as Xilinx have every right to go after people who use their Trademarks.
And possibly you are splitting the case into two, the original Trademark dispute which doesn't just go away when you accuse them of Malice, possibly even a separate counter suit for "malice"?

The way it works is that the big company combards the small defence lawyer with so much crap that they must respond to in-depth, that the time it takes to do that eats up all the defendants savings.

[EEVblog]

sure it isn't just Xilinx's law firm acting like YouTube's copyright violation bot  ?

I doubt they'd have an active mandate to go out and search for content that competes against Xilinx's official partners.
Occam's razor, it's more likely that one of these companies found these courses that are 1/10th the price and complained.
https://www.xilinx.com/training/atp.html

but they may have a mandate to go after content that show Xilinx logos in a way that they think could be misunderstood
to be official

I've never heard of that happening, but I have heard of the opposite case of official partners complaining. My money is on that.

[OwO]

Does anyone else think that FPGA is like one of the biggest dogs to work with in the electronics world?

Massively complicated, closed software (and jesus I thought C compilers were bad), hard to use, expensive, difficult to solder, windows can probably destroy your design, etc.

I started with Altera FPGAs and had amassed a big repository of various VHDL modules. When I moved to Xilinx everything just worked. Try that with any microcontroller. As soon as you need to do any I/O (even simple crap like SPI) it's vendor specific and can even differ between device families from the same vendor. The GPIOs on stm32f0 work completely differently than on the stm32f1. It's close to impossible to write portable code.

[Bassman59]

Does anyone else think that FPGA is like one of the biggest dogs to work with in the electronics world?

Yes, famously so, and that is one of the reasons why they are not popular for general purpose stuff.

Well, given the amount of logic one can stuff into even a moderate-size FPGA, one shouldn't be surprised that the tools are complex and the special rules for making the things work are not trivial.

[Bassman59]

Does anyone else think that FPGA is like one of the biggest dogs to work with in the electronics world?

Massively complicated, closed software (and jesus I thought C compilers were bad), hard to use, expensive, difficult to solder, windows can probably destroy your design, etc.

I think I would rather work with any other component then a FPGA if I could avoid it. I think they need all the help they can get to get rid of all the engineering questions associated with them. If they had advanced open source software I might try it. Having to do all the complications in a closed ecosystem?? NO THANKS

I can see that you really haven't had much real experience doing FPGA designs for products which actually ship to customers.

The products I work on literally are not possible without FPGAs. High-speed converters, multiple data paths, high-speed communications to a remote server, and a whole bunch of other stuff to make the product work. And the bulk of the logic is on PCBs the size of credit cards.

If what you work on is not that complex or doesn't have the speed and the channel-count and size requirements, then you don't need to do FPGAs. And that's fine -- billions of dollars in electronic products ship every year with nothing more complicated than a 50-cent microcontroller doing the work.

I think when business people decide to make something, and they hear 'we need to get a FPGA guy for this' they think 'lets make something else'.

I think that business people decide what market they want to be in, and whether their products are sufficiently interesting to that market, and then they hire engineers who can do the design work. It's not like there are only ten of us FPGA guys in the entire country.

I don't even WANT to learn it because what I am going to get stuck in some kind of closed ecosystem.

While it's true that there are lots of aspects of the chips that are proprietary, it's not hard at all to go between toolsets and devices. But you have to want to learn, and you have to have a reason to do so. There's nothing inherently wrong about doing Xilinx-only projects.

Even assembly is kind of crappy because you can learn like ATMEL or PIC but it can kinda transfer over. C is better.

Except when you have to deal with the details of how SiLab's timers work vs ST's vs Atmel's, and they're all different, and very little of the code you wrote for one can transfer over because the parts are all completely different. And even though there are attempts with, say, ARM Cortex parts, to have some commonality, each vendor has its own special sauce which makes porting annoying.

For all I know learning one of those FPGA systems is like learning freaking FORTRAN!!!

That's it, in bold -- you DON'T know, yet you're happy to come onto a professional forum visited by people who actually DO know and you just start talking without making any sense. Just because it's all too hard for YOU to do doesn't mean that a lot of engineers make a living working with these devices.

You have choices. You can continue to do whatever it is that you do, and if you're making a living at it, great. Or you can spend the time to learn the tools and the parts and if a project or employer needs an FPGA, you can step up and do the work.

[rhb]

It doesn't make any difference what the court ruling would be because it would never get that far because Robert would not be able to afford the costs in defending such a case that Xilinx with their deep pockets could make drag on for years. That's how it works and Xilinx know it.

That can be a very expensive gambit to play against a good lawyer.  If  Robert's lawyer can make a case for malice, it can lead to rather considerable penalties.  While lawyers can drag such things out for decades, good ones don't have to do a lot of work.

He'd still go bankrupt before he could win the case either way, it's going to costs several hundred thousand dollars.
Proving "malice" would be much more difficult than you think, as Xilinx have every right to go after people who use their Trademarks.
And possibly you are splitting the case into two, the original Trademark dispute which doesn't just go away when you accuse them of Malice, possibly even a separate counter suit for "malice"?

The way it works is that the big company combards the small defence lawyer with so much crap that they must respond to in-depth, that the time it takes to do that eats up all the defendants savings.

I had a chat with my friend who confirmed my assessment in the context of American law and legal precedents.  The malice aspect would only come into play in the assessment of penalties, not before.  That part is iffy, but the potential of treble damages and legal fees will give even big corporations pause.  At least if anyone with any brains is paying attention.

English law (which is what American law is based on) is a combination of three elements:

Language

Logic

Precedent

Overcoming precedent is difficult as it requires proving the logic of the prior decision was faulty or the facts of the present case are different.

Judges can recognize when a plaintiff is merely attempting to bankrupt the defendant and a good attorney will make a point of calling attention to tactics intended solely to exhaust the defendant's resources. Very few judges will allow that as it makes it  likely their judgement will be overturned on appeal.  Having your judgements overturned is "career limiting".

I've read enough contracts that I know for a fact that a large number of modern lawyers cannot write a correct sentence in the English language.  I dealt with one oil and gas lease which had a 160+ word "sentence" in 6 point type. I don't recall the exact details of that contract, but I struck out many lines and entire sections in numerous lease contracts I reviewed for my parents.    And this was routine with my employment contracts.  I'd mark up the client's proposed contract, send it to my lawyer and then discuss the ramifications of the various clauses on the phone.  After which I submitted an amended contract.  I never had the amended contracts rejected.

In some respects this conversation reminds me of people who won't try to learn mathematics because they might fail.  Conflating the law produces the same result as conflating electronics or mathematics.  Once you mash everything into a nonsensical jumble it looks far more intimidating than it really is.

[NiHaoMike]

If what you work on is not that complex or doesn't have the speed and the channel-count and size requirements, then you don't need to do FPGAs. And that's fine -- billions of dollars in electronic products ship every year with nothing more complicated than a 50-cent microcontroller doing the work.

Quite a few modern microcontrollers - most notably a few new PICs and the Cypress PSoC series - have some programmable logic to allow unusual port I/O that previously required some form of external logic. I see that as the start of microcontrollers gaining FPGA-like abilities. What I would like to see is a low cost FPGA with a hard microcontroller inside - it seems like the only options currently available are to use an external microcontroller (more cost/space, limited I/O interconnectivity) or to inefficiently create a soft core in the FPGA and significantly increase the design size.

Make that low cost enough and it will be a real hit among advanced microcontroller developers. Now when they have to interface some weird device that's timing sensitive, rather than try to figure out how to (mis)use one of the peripherals to generate the waveforms or bit bang it in software while having to contend with making it work with the interrupts, they just program some logic to do exactly what they want.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I just received this email from Xilinx - not sure if in response to this thread or my tweet , guessing the latter :

Hi Mike,

We see that you recently responded to the post by Mr. Robert Feranec and wanted to let you know that we did reply to him. We would like to share with you a few keys points that we provided to him. You are free to post these as well.

We greatly value the developer and engineering communities who use Xilinx tools to enable the technology of today and tomorrow - and those who educate them. We apologize for the manner in which Mr. Feranec's situation was handled. It has brought to light several gaps in our content and internal checks, including a lack of guidance concerning the use of Xilinx's intellectual property and the difficulty in receiving a response from Xilinx for clarity. Please be assured that we are actively reviewing and updating our processes to avoid this from happening again.

That said, we are responding by working on a set of guidelines that will address the use of Xilinx's intellectual property while at the same time, provide clarity to content creators on acceptable usage; once finalized, we will provide written guidance at https://www.xilinx.com/about/legal.html.  Second, we will ensure that situations such as this are addressed with a friendly email from a Xilinx employee instead of a letter from a law firm. In the meantime, please know that we are supportive of the spirit of educators and would not want to do anything that would stand in the way of learning about our technology.

Please let me know if you have any questions or feel free to reach out to our Communications Director Tara Sims  <taras@xilinx.com>.

Best,
Nicole

[emece67]

.

[EEVblog]

Xilinx responded to myself and Robert, and it seems others as well:

We greatly value the developer and engineering communities who use Xilinx tools to enable the technology of today and tomorrow – and those who educate them. We apologize for the manner in which Mr. Feranec’s situation was handled. It has brought to light several gaps in our content and internal checks, including a lack of guidance concerning the use of Xilinx’s intellectual property and the difficulty in receiving a response from Xilinx for clarity. Please be assured that we are actively reviewing and updating our processes to avoid this from happening again.

That said, we are responding by working on a set of guidelines that will address the use of Xilinx’s intellectual property while at the same time, provide clarity to content creators on acceptable usage; once finalized, we will provide written guidance at https://www.xilinx.com/about/legal.html.  Second, we will ensure that situations such as this are addressed with a friendly email from a Xilinx employee instead of a letter from a law firm. In the meantime, please know that we are supportive of the spirit of educators and would not want to do anything that would stand in the way of learning about our technology.

[asmi]

But when it gets to things like DDR memory things get complicated with licensing again. Unless you are using a chip with a hardware DDR3 controller(Not many have it) then you will need to use there soft DDR controller IP and that stuff is not free. It usually gives you a evaluation version of the IP with encrypted source files and a death timer that kills it after an hour of running. To get the full version that you are allowed fully simulate and will run on hardware forever you need to pay a few grand for a license to the DDR3 controller IP or pay a few more grand to buy the full version of the IDE that includes all of that IP...for 1 year before the license expires and you need to pay a few grand again to renew it.

The irony is that Xilinx is the only FPGA vendor that provides you DDR2/3 memory controller IP FOR FREE with no strings attached! Along with 130+ of other free IPs in their library.

[asmi]

Quite a few modern microcontrollers - most notably a few new PICs and the Cypress PSoC series - have some programmable logic to allow unusual port I/O that previously required some form of external logic. I see that as the start of microcontrollers gaining FPGA-like abilities. What I would like to see is a low cost FPGA with a hard microcontroller inside - it seems like the only options currently available are to use an external microcontroller (more cost/space, limited I/O interconnectivity) or to inefficiently create a soft core in the FPGA and significantly increase the design size.

Microblaze core in MCU configuration takes about 2k LUT and 2k FFs (that's including interrupt controller through you can skip it if your project doesn't need it), so you can fit a couple of them even to the smallest Spartan-7. And in this configuration they easily reach 150 MHz clock speed even on a slowest speed grade.

[free_electron]

Nope. In this case Xilinx have said that having their logo next to their competitors is hugely damaging to their brand and they are demanding him to remove all content.

I think a have a few boards somewhere that has Altera, xilinx and Actel FPGA's , all on the same board... There may be some Lattice parts on there as well.  He could use a picture of those ....