Slashdot Mirror
Suing Over... Fans?
NiceGeek hooked us up with an amusing story about assorted legal
wackiness surrounding
CPU Fans. Apparently one company is suing another because they are
(gasp) stealing advanced fan technology and violating patents! Horror! The
sad part is that its probably true. Someone needs to write a perl script to take this story, and s/x/y/g the names and technologies, and then feed every company and technology into it. Then create an archive of every possible violation lawsuit. Then patent the idea,
and sue anyone who violates it. Just cut me in for thinking of it ;)
While I have made an exception this once in your case, I don't generally respond to weenies.
Good idea, unfortunantly theres already a lot of prior art for that under a lot of previous slashdot articles...
I bet you I can find a piece of electronic equipment which uses the same technique they've patented and was made 15 years ago. For crying out loud! We're just talking about a little go-to-hell fan here. What sort of future litigation will result over design similarities that really DO matter?
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
I assume the lawsuits were brought to being because of some stolen designs which were patented. They've got all the right in the world to bring it to court. So what if it's "just" a computer fan, it's patented design, and Sunonwealth is within their rights. The infringement of such patents could cause actual finacial loss, among other things. /. that have no legitimacy as patents.
At least it's not something we've all come to despise like Amazon's bullshit one click patent, and the countless other patents we've seen reported on
-kidlinux.
All corporations are more concerned with their own success than with their customers happiness. The one and only purpose they have is to make money.
Keeping customers happy is simply a tool that they use to accomplish this goal, not a goal in and of itself.
From the article, it sounds like there is a legitimate grievance against a possible infringer. Taco, what is so special about fans that you consider them to be trivial and unpatentable?
A lot of expensive development goes into making good fans, and the company involved has every right to defend their IP. As an engineer, I'm disgusted that you would be so quick to trivialize it.
Ever looked inside a modern flush mechanism? These babies are an example of some serious engineering! Not rocket science, but still some pretty sophisticated design, not to mention tricks of manufacturing. (BTW, working with precision ceramics can be a bitch!) Look at the parts in there and I'll bet you will find a half dozen or so US Patent numbers stamped in them. Yes, those simple looking ceramic fixtures now do the same work as their 20 year old cousins, but with less than 1/5 the waste water, and probably 1/100 the water that was used by the Romans. Sure, the concept of internal plumbing has been around since the Romans, but they had a lot to learn about water conservation and the mechanics of quiet, reliable, inexpensive, self regulating, automatic shut off valves.
Just because something looks simple doesn't mean it was obvious to create in the first place!!
--
Your Servant, B. Baggins
my patent reading skills are significantly impaired. But I think this MIGHT be patents about dynamic position of the fan rotor so that it spins in balance around its axis rather than wobbling, even without using very solid bearings.
If so, it is indeed quite "non-obvious technology".
Some patents have a point.
Uh, why not go after the company that makes the infringing fans instead of the companies that use them?
Because the infringing fans are likely made in Singapore, or some other country that doesn't give a rat's arse for patents. Going after Creative and nVidia allows them to sue under US patent law.
0 1 - just my two bits
Have you not seen the new G4 Cubes? A well-designed case and a well-designed microprocessor == fans suck.
:) Neither that nor the G4 is even 1/2 the clock speed of the newest chips from AMD or Intel, nor is it as popular.
Yeah, I've got a 486 SX2/25 Overdrive chip insde of a shoebox that doesn't overheat either, but it's got exactly nothing to do with good design.
That said, I want a dual G4 system. With fans. Big ol' quiet patented Sunon fans, 'cause sunon fans are really quite good fans.
-- ;-)
See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux,
you have to be a sneaky bastard too
[Linus Torvalds in < 4rikft$7g5@linux.cs.Helsinki.FI > ]
You can't patent the Venturi effect (I hope), but I garantee you that all the applicable carburetor parts designed by Suzuki, Yamaha et al are patented. They put R&D money into designing them and they were subsequently patented. That's how the system is supposed to work.
I can infer how to make a fusion reactor from a high-school textbook. That doesn't mean I can patent one.
-B
I realize you weren't saying anything about the patents in your post .. my response was mentally more targetted towards somebody elses post that sounded similar to yours, but they were arguing that since building a *good* fan can be very difficult that the company may deserve to patent it.
Hey, I'm gonna patent "I'm gonna patent" posts and refuse to license it just to save valuable moderator points squashing those posts! It's repetetively redundant!
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
I found this last night on BBSpot. It's a Random Slashdot story generator. Good for about 10 good laughs, about 3 deja-vu experiences, and for fooling that gullible newbie about 4 times...
Actually, the article says that Sunonwealth is already involved in a patent suit with ADDA. It mentions that they just got a federal injunction against ADDA for discussing the case, and a federal judge ordered ADDa to explain why they shouldn't be held in contempt of court.
John
THey *are* going after the company who made the infringing fans.
--John
Indeed. I maintain about three or four dozen machines at this company, and the most frequent problem we have is with processor and power-supply fans crapping out. A fair number of our machines are PII-350s or thereabouts, and you can't even get replacement heatsink/fan combos for those anymore. (I usually get some other type of heatsink/fan, throw out the heatsink, and attach the new fan to the old heatsink...a few minutes' work which will be good for another year or two, at which time the fan will probably need to be replaced again.) Power supplies are cheap enough that it's usually cheaper (parts cost vs. downtime) to replace the whole thing than to replace just the fan within, though I've done that with some of my home systems. A few hard drives and a motherboard or two have gone bad over the past couple of years, but it's rare that a month goes by without a fan conking out.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
What ever happened to that old and lovable transliterate (of the sed veriety) y/x/y/? Have we all become too lazy to use anything other than a reg-ex?
-Michael
-Michael
What about the fanin my car? That gets pretty hot. I had another car where the fan did run constantly while the car was running. Just like a cpu fan. You really think that this is a new idea?
I think that there may be some difference in scale here -- and of engineering technique. The jet engine on a Harrier may run for perhaps 4-6 hours (on a ferry flight) at most, spinning at several thousand rpm, and will then be serviced by a very skilled engineering crew.
On the other hand, the PC fan will spin at perhaps
50-100 rpm, for weeks or months at a time (on a server), and won't get any maintenance at all.
--
EEyore
Umm... Crusoe?
--
--
I don't want to rule the world... I just want to be in charge of mayonnaise.
Somehow I get the feeling that the company that makes these fans is misusing their own products. Imagine this: company executives are in a boardroom with a huge fan on the wall. One of the blades is painted a color. They turn off the air conditioning and wait for the fan to stop.
Corporate lawyer: Yes! Sue for asinine reasons! Let's see here. Who can we sue?
VP of marketing: Hmmm. We have competitors. Let's sue them for patent infringement to increase our marketshare.
I think Sunonwealth is justified here -- ADDA made an inferior product using stolen technology, which could ruin the reputation of microfans in general if they aren't forced to stop.
-c.
--
Casey
More scratches on the cave wall, thanks be to anonymity.
Not a bad idea. Not the infringement issue. Just
the idea of suing over a fan. You go and spend
several thousand dollars on switching equipment
and the vendor goes and puts a $0.10 fan in it to
"Keep it kewl". THe fan creators over the weekend
and you come back to a pile of goo.
Of course, you could have insane grad students that believe the fan is "too loud" and go into your switch and clip it out.
To borrow a line from Glueleg: Crazy Life Brother
"Me? Mad? No. You simply don't understand madness at all. You must learn to UnDErStaND..."
That all these corporations are more interested in patenting anything that has anything remotely similar to their business. You would think that they would be better off on actually creating something worth patenting, rather than trying to patent the "all new" and "better than before" e-toaster (Patent Pending) Plug it in to any 120VAC (USA Only) outlet and a new 'Toasterable' PC (available soon) and you can watch "color video" of your toast toasting!
Well we can't sue anybody, but we can sure complain about it.
--------
--------
It's OK to be social, just don't tell anyone about it.
Here are the claims for the patents in question:
These are for particular ways of building fans -- not miniature fans in general. How long have we been cooling 486s with miniature fans?
--
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
It's worth a fair bit if it is a genuine advance over your competitors, so people are using your fan instead of theirs as a result. /.'ers are probably one of the groups most likely to 'get this' I'd feel, assembling your own systems can mean you're a lot more likely to build brand-loyalty to a fan manufacturer than a 'normal' user.
Lawyers cost, but losing the technology that seperates you from your competitors can cost you your perceived 'Edge', and thus your customers, and thus your business
Molt
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
an electronic controlled pro grade r/c servo is prior art to all 3 of these claims. They have been around for a few years. Older servos just use a potentiometer the newer ones use something simular is not identicle to what they claim to patent
never post when your out
of it on nyquil sheesh.
an electronic controlled pro grade r/c servo is prior art to all 3 of these claims. They have been around for a few years. Older servos just use a potentiometer the newer ones use something simular if not identicle to what they claim to patent
I'm going to patent Bringing Large Oxygen Waves Into Normal Greenhouse Heat Aspirated Realtime Datasystems. It's high time that all these engineering pirates pay for the amazing innovation of BLOWINGHARD. I'm tired of my meelions being squandered by the malicious people who refuse to pay an honest dollar.
.cig - what you do after winning a good flame war
Obviously nVidia and Creative must not agree with you, then. After all, they seem to think that it's worth a premium to buy the Cadillac of fans instead of the run of the mill ones. Certainly there are a lot of overclockers who think that the absolute best CPU fan is worth spending money on. It may be that GPU makers are now pushing the limits to the point that they have to push their chips to the very limit in order to get the performance they want, in which case the very best fan may be more necessary than luxury.
In any case, the fact that the patent is being infringed is indirect evidence that it's actually a good idea. After all, people are much more likely to try to steal good ideas than stupid ones. The fact that a company is willing to risk litigation by infringing on a patent rather than just working around it suggests that the idea is worth copying.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
The fan on my nVidia card just died yesterday. If they are infringing on any patants, they certainly are crappie ones.
Did it occur to anybody that Sunonwealth might have actually developed a fan, using its own resources, that is technically superior to its competitors? It's not like they're suing for the idea of putting a fan on a graphics card [like the originial writeup packages it as]. Also, they're suing the 2 companies for importing the violating fans into the juristiction of US Patent law, as the offending fan manufacturers are outside of said sphere of influence. I think this is getting bad spin because nVidia and Creative are popular companies for geeks.
Haven't we beaten the Napster issue to death already?
oh.... those other FANS....
nevermind.
[Connection closed by foreign host]
Ok, fine... that was one of those 'open mouth, insert foot' comments...
I guess if the sensors were to see if the fan was movign at all would make sense, but if you really need to know exactly how many RPM's your CPU fans are pushing, you need a life.
Riigghhtt. Everyone has a stepper motor in their cases. Suuurrree. Do you know how much a stepper and driver normally cost? About $100.
I think this conversation was centered around 12V fans used on individual components. I have to admit that I have only replaced a couple power supply fans, but the point I was trying to make is the same.
First of all, how much metal is used in a small fan? About a tenth of a gram of simple copper conductor. How much lubrication is used in a small fan? Less than a drop of LPS-1. How efficient does a 12V fan have to be? It doesn't. I continue to see Yugos driving down the road, but does that mean that they are well built? I have several machines here, and some of them date back to the 80's, and they still have some working, original fans.
All I am saying is that it is ridiculous to call a 12V fan an engineering marvel which requires exquisite design. As a matter of fact, I work every day at a generating station that uses these little fans which cost hundreds (yes, I mean hundreds) of dollars each, are built into multi-million dollar electronics cabinets, operate 24/7, and still fail, even with regular oiling and filters on the air intakes.
Face it. How many parts manufacturers are really going to spend many $$$ to design a tiny fan? Don't you think they would put their resources to better use? You can buy nicer, more expensive fans, with aluminum blades and mutliple ball bearings, just like you can buy nicer, more expensive, better built cars, but who cares about a sub-$1 fan (or a $300 one really)?
Seriously, these fan designs do NOT require innovation. Having something that you can't live without doesn't make it innovative. Take for instance the toilet. I couldn't live without it, yet its design has been around since ancient Rome. (The Japanese may not agree. I have seen toilets from Japan that wipe for you, play a little music, and spray your behind with perfume so your rear does in fact smell like roses. By the way, I believe that these toilets are patented. http://www.theimageworks.com/toilet/toiltftur.htm :)
Take two fans in your system of the same size but different manufacturers - they are identical. In fact, I wouldn't be suprised if the design isn't public domain. If you want to see a fan that takes some real engineering, take a look at a 480VAC variable pitch axial blade design which we use to recirculate the air in our reactor containment building. Better yet, take a look at a helecopter blade. Axial design with collective pitch control AND individual pitch control, not to mention attitude control, etc...
I'm sorry, but I have to agree. They are just simple fans.
My point was in reply to someone asserting that stupid lawsuits are the fault of the plaintiff, not the lawyer themselves.
:) THat'll teach me to skim read.
And of course they want their services used, but my main focus was the fact that they are also defining the way they are used. Lawyers could still make a living very easily without preforming such silly actions, and by taking other cases. Indeed, if they did not take such cases, no one would ask.
And I was wondering for at least 30 seconds why you had a sentence saying simply "The Motion Picture Ass."
mick
Well, at least it would put an end to the court of Appeal.
Personally, I think clubs aren't quite the way to go. The arguments would just be heavy and blunt. Now with swords, you have the cut and thrust of debate, the deadly riposte, the parry, the defensive stance etc.
mick
>> The point being, of course, is to thin their numbers.
I don't suppose we could make elections work the same way? Though that is really just going back a few centuries.
>> It can't be any worse than it is now.
What, the legal system or the WWWF?
Obviously, the law suits would not exist without the business CEO's deciding to start one. However, the methodologies, culture, and tradition of business within the legal profession only encourages such actions to be taken. If lawyers didn't accept such silly cases, then the CEO's wouldn't think it was possible to try them.
It almost makes me want to know what is in the fan that warrants a patent in the first place. "Round thing with blades on the end spins and wind comes out the other end." Isn't the general idea kinda simple?
---
You know, I kick you in the nuts, you kick me in the nuts. Who ever goes down first wins.
I say ADDA kicks first. I have experienced a 75% failure rate with Sunon fans, compared to 0% with ADDA fans!
Actually, I think one of the humor sites(maybe segfault.org) has already created a random slashdot story generator that creates stories just like these.
The fact is, you ARE just as sue-able for this as is nVidia.
Welcome to the US, where anyone can sue anyone for any damn thing they please, and the defendant either looses or spends boatloads of money to defend themselves.
...I dont know about you, but until they come up with some sort miraculous processor that creates 'little' or 'no' heat, Fans are damn important! I've got about thirty of them of various sizes with a 5 foot radius of my head, and the ones that buzz, die or otherwise suck (as opposed to blow?) are the bane of my existence.
..but lets *not* hear it for the lawsuits..
Lets hear it for the fans!
air and light and time and space
And, as a bonus, lets them get bitch-slapped by two large companies who are not actually breaking the law and have lawyers drooling at the prospect of of getting time in a courtroom.
--
Dyolf Knip
If our submarines where the size of these fans, where would you put the crew?
;-)
In all seriousness, this is what patent law is about. Company A spends ooodles of money designing a product that works better than everything else, company B takes one look at it and figures and says hey if we copy it, we save the development costs. Thus hurting company A. It's very common, A common road down this path is OEM the part, then design your own copy and dump the OEM. Happens all the time... If I was feeling slander happy I could rattle off several cases that I know, but I lack the $ for a lawyer
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
The real technique is in quite, long life, energy efficent operation. And I'm willing to bet it's one of the following three that the patents cover.
I like them quite
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
TastesLikeHerringFlavoredChicken
Patents are public information. It's not as if the patenting company can keep it secret, only to announce the existence of a patent when they decide to file the lawsuit.
If the other companies are in fact infringing the patents in question, they should have known about it beforehand.
I know, because I do patent searching for a Fortune 500 company precisely to make sure there aren't competing patents on a technology before we begin development.
Did you happen to catch BT's patent on hyperlinks? I hope you kept your company from wasting any development time and money on that patented technology. Did you happen to discover AltaVista's patent on search engines and keep your company from wasting any time and effort on search engines?
Obviously, I have no idea what your company does or where they might fit in the more controversal patents of the last couple of years. The point is, when patents are overly broad no amount of research is going to discover whether or not something infringes until it gets through the court system. And, while I hate to be cynical, the only people who can win in court are those that can afford huge teams of lawyers.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
I don't know if I agree than software and business practice ideas should be under the auspices of the patent office rather than the copyright or trademark offices, but as long as the patent office is where these things are going to be determined I agree that there does need to be some kind of domain expert peer review.
Here is my suggestion:
ONE: Flush out the cr*p. Any patent that can be disqualified due to prior art except that it contains the words "web", "internet", "computer", "network", is immediatly tossed out. In other words, if the idea already exists but a patent was granted based upon that idea being on the "internet", the patents is tossed (and the applicant is beaten with a rubber hose.)
TWO: Any software patent that makes it through the normal patent granting process is issued on a probationary basis. Within 6 months, the patent holder must be able to get the idea behind the technology published in an independent journal (maybe C/C++ User Journal or Dr. Dobbs for algorithm type patents). If the idea is accepted for publication (even if it's not published within that 6 month period.) the patent is accepted. If the idea is rejected, the probationary patent is revoked on the basis of obviousness. In this situation, the domain experts are the independent journals that follow the industry. In addition, the publication might flush out prior art before the patent becomes too entrenched.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
...but if you really need to know exactly how many RPM's your CPU fans are pushing, you need a life.
Actually, if fans drop below a certain rpm, they become useless. They're still moving, but at a crappy rate. If you have a sensor that can measure the speed of your fan, then the motherboard can determine if it is a safe speed, and take appropriate actions. For example, my Abit KT7-RAID has a sensor on the CPU fan, and I can set a flag in the BIOS that will send an alarm out and shut off the computer if the fan drops below 200 rpm. That's a pretty useful feature, as I don't want my Athlon to fry...
btw - i do have a life (last time I checked).
Whadaya mean? Aren't lawsuits considered a form of revenue? (From the actions of various companies/persons lately, I'd have thought everyone was trying to earn money that way.)
krenshala
krenshala
krenshala
*cough* Rambus *cough*
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
A fan company that blows, kinda fitting really.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Even with the correct spelling mistakes and typos. Very impressive!
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Oh, one problem it doesn't repeat stories... If it was a true /. story generator it would show 90% of all articles twice.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
In a DeathMatch.
This solves two problems
Too many law suits
Too many Lawyers.
Remember, lawyers most often get paid for their time in court, getting ready for court, etc. Therefore, it is in their best interest, not the interest of their clients, to have long and protracted legal disputes. They get paid either way.
Hmm. Maybe we could setup a live Quake level out in the middle of the desert of something. I bet people would even pay to watch!
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
It's not like any of these patent threads are any different from one another, really. If we don't just get rid of the "Patent Pending" category (please, CmdrTaco/Hemos/anyone, please do it), I propose a standard response that we can all just paste into Slashdot:
This company got a patent on foo! I can't believe it! Stupid patent office--don't the examiners check to see if anything is obvious? I thought of foo in 1983 and then three times before lunch today! Companies should compete and not sue each other. People should have to pay a fine or go to jail for getting patents like this! Now the Internet will collapse! I haven't read the patent or the claims, but I know that it will stop me from doing foo and bar, and that violates my freedom of speech!
Did I leave anything out?
I agree that the creative (or not so creative)uses lawyers have found for patent law lately are a little offensive, but I dont think each occurrence is newsworthy in itself.
We live in a society which has patent laws and copyright laws. It therefore follows that people will use them to further their interests and keep down competitors.
Is this a sneaky way of gettting the laws changed? "yes yes we'll change the laws- now just stop whining"
2cooltek.com. All your cooling desires, satisfied in one place. And if you want a shock, check out the high-output 120mm fans and the Black Label 80mm fan. So loud, it's hard to be heard over them, but if you want high cfm, they're the way to go.
---
4-star general in a one-man army.
I read through the article, and although it would seem that ADDA (the accused fan mfg) isn't exactly playing nice, it is them who should be sued yet again, not NVidia and Creative. If someone clones your patented product and rips you off, sue that organisation, not its clients. This is just a lame ploy to score some easy cash without actually doing anything.
Sunon is well known for making so-so fans, not crap, but not amazing either. In the growing overclocking market of insane cooling gadgetry they just fall short and they're jealous. If they were looking to put their foot down and make a point, they'd go right against ADDA to stop their operations, but they're going after industry giants Creative and NVidia, who obviously have deeper pockets even though they have little control over the production of these fans, aside from their buying power.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
If you can figure out a fusion reactor that actually generates more electricity than you put into it I'm pretty certain that would be a novel idea at least.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
I'm not sure this is even a story, things like this happen all the time, theres not much to interest the average geek here. Now if they were using GPL'd fans and refusing to release the blueprints.... :-)
no sig.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Wow, it looks like the lawyers have come up with an equivalent to getting Delled.
I wonder if you could patent that (the process of patenting a technology and then suing anyone that resembled your patent)?
Kurdt
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
Hmm.. I think I have a good idea.. why don't we all go read WHAT the patents are for and decide if the patents are trival.. everyone is arguing if making a fan is hard without any knowledge of what the patent is.. *shrug*.. just a suggestion but it seems to make sense to me!
I thought someone said there was going to be free beer!
You should be getting your cease and desist letter in the mail soon as well.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Best first post of all time.
- - - If the sun is a star, why can't I see it at night?
that the controversy will blow over.
- - - If the sun is a star, why can't I see it at night?
This is fan-tastic! I bet this guy's gonna have heaps of fans! Okay, now I'm just being in-fan-tile. I'd better stop before someone blows me away *groan*
Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem.
Ok, I believe you! They're nice fans! I like them too! Though I'm not all that sure a business can patent "well-made products" or "products that last X hours." Of course, I could be wrong...
"For success, it is essential you have Thunderball Fists." "I can have such a thing?" "That's right. Thunderball Fists."
Before I say anything else, let me remind those that want to support Sononwealth's action that it's unquestionably astounding that it has found a way to work the words "piezocrystallization" and "crystallographically" into its commentaries. However, you may find it even more astounding that it maliciously defames and damagingly misrepresents everyone and everything around it. There's a word for that: libel.
Notice the abrupt shamelessness of Sononwealth's legal complaint. The two things I just mentioned -- the way that Sononwealth is chomping at the bit for a chance to trivialize the Intellectual Property issues, and the fact that as conscious, sentient beings aware of our actions and capable of response, we must invite all the other companies who have been or are about to be harmed by Sononwealth to continue to express and assert their concerns in a constructive and productive fashion -- may sound like they're completely unrelated, but they're not.
The common theme here is that we must carve solutions that are neither scary nor headlong. Our industry depends on that. In the end, you probably can't find one good reason why Sononwealth should endeavor in new litigation forcing anyone (who isn't one of their shills) to live in an environment that can, at best, be described as contemptuously tolerant. Thank you.
::I will not moderate my opinions for your stinking karma
I thought the biggest advance in fan design was ball bearings and teflon-coated rotors. Either way, I have a total of 11 fans in my system, and I'm trying to sneak two 3.7" fans in somehow. I also plan to make a wood faceplate for my computer.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
... over the REAL fans!
-----------
MOVE 'SIG'.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I wonder what the qualifications are for working in the Patent Office? With the millions of patents out there and so many being applied for every day, how do they keep track of what is legit? How can they tell if someone is trying to patent an "invention" that already exists.
I really don't see anything wrong with this. I just bought a Taisol heatsink/fan for my new computer that had a patented fan clip (to attach it to the heatsink). While it was hardly out of the ordinary, it was a novel design that went beyond the normal screw-on method as far as noise production and ease-of-use go. Having attached and removed the fan several times, I can certainly call it a worthwhile patent. The method is probably something that any dedicated hacker could come up with, but no one did. That is what patents are for. From the descriptions that others are posting, it seems that this is a simple, but useful modification to fan design. What's wrong with the patent? If I came up with a bankable idea, I'd sure sue if someone ripped it off. Now, some patents are frivilous (1-click-shopping), and some are rediculous (Rambus claiming that RAM produced following an industry standard in which they were part of the formative group violates their patents). This is a genuinely good use of the patent system though.
I don't see what you people are complaining about. Are any of you engineers? Aerospace engineers? Do you know what it takes to figure out optimal blade shape to produce a specific airflow? No? Then I dare say you are clueless on this issue.
Nothing wrong with fan blade patents, or even bearings and EMF gadgetry. With that said, it would be stupid to patent the RPM calculator.
It is not for the patent office to have to translate the description into lay terms.
Law and government policies are written in exact language so there is no confusion over the meaning. But this does not mean that it has to be written simply. A complex issue is generally complex, and to "dumb it down" can downplay the complexity of the issue.
The work that was done cost the company money, and someone else is trying to get away with not paying for the work that was done.
I think I see where this is going: "Hi nVidia, the company you're buying your fans from ripped off our patented technology. We'll be going after them in court soon and will shut them down. By the way, once they're shut down, where do you plan on getting your fans? Since we invented the technology behind the fans you've been using, maybe you'll install our fans on the thousands of graphic cards you'll be shipping next year. Have your people call my people; we'll do lunch."
Today's sig brought to you by http://www.swankypimp.com
You drifted from the topic somewhat. Never mind.
--
I wouldn't go quite so far as to call Taco a programmer.
--
I would half heartedly agree, but RAMBUS thinks they are responsible for SDRAM. Thats bad news.
Bad Patents are out enemy.
Fight censors!
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
Would the person who modded my post down as flamebait be kind enough to tell me why they though my request to be so? It doesn't take very long for the authors to add the relevent links (mostly cut and paste) and doing so makes the comments on the patents in general more informed, saves time for those who do know how to look up the patents, and allows those who don't know about the patent databases to know. What is flamebait about that?
Rockwalrus
Rockwalrus
Rockwalrus
The sleep of reason produces monsters -- Francisco Goya
In related news, Boeing aircraft has been served with notice that it's various helicoptors, including the AH-64a Apache gunship, are in violation of patents.
Sunonwealth Electric Machine sells smaller versions of these fans that Boeing has incorporated into their "helicoptors".
Boeing has alledgedly been attaching these larger fans atop the boxes and flying about.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
I almost want to learn Perl just to understand some of the comments on Slashdot!
The way things are going, these things might actually be accepted and patented...
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suwain_2
Some how, I have a feeling that a whore in the Neatherlands can contest the patent due to her prior art. All this patent stuff really sucks.
Douglas Adams
1952-2001 :(
perhaps i should restate my last comment... shouldn't corporations be more focused on working for the customer than working for themselves, i.e. keep legal issues behind closed doors and keep customer satisfaction as the number one concern? it just seems like a more logical solution to me, but perhaps i'm being naive.
again - shouldn't corporations be doing business rather then suing?
It is fairly rough service for the bearings though -- the built-in lubrication has to work over perhaps a 70 degrees C range without getting too thick when cold (so the fan won't start) or getting too thin when hot. If they figured they could trust you to take it apart and change the grease every 3 months, the design would be trivial, but most users never take the covers off, so the lube must not dry out, leak out, or otherwise fail through several years of spinning at a fairly high speed and temperature. That's a bit of a challenge in materials design.
Someone mentioned disk drive bearings by comparison. I think hard drive bearings float on a film of air once it's up to speed, so the surfaces are in contact only at spin up and spin down--total miles traveled with surfaces in contact is thus normally much less than with a fan. Also note that disk bearings only support the weight of the disk, fan bearings have to support a thrust load due to fan reaction (that is, it's pushing air so there's a push back). I suspect the fan bearings are getting the heavier duty by far. And the budget is tighter on a $9 fan than a $100 disk drive.
Yes, I'd like to copyright the circulation of cold air over something hot... Oh! Then .. then i'm going to copyright arobic resperation. Anybody want to go in with me on this?
Will you actualy save money hiring a lawyer to protect your fan inovations. Lawyers cost alot of money, fan technolodgy, not so much I would think.
If thats what happened then yeah there might be a case for suing but while the idea might not be obvious to some its probably been independantly arrived at by different companies and it cost them money too. So there's not necessarily a theft of an idea or work done. I mean there's only so many ways you can do it I suspect.
My concern with patents is the fact the they are given for stuff that isn't all that inventive really, just good engineering (and I don't mean that in an anti-engineering way at all)
And lets not even start on the genome stuff. Onion had that one covered when they ran the Microsoft patents I and O headlines.
If you people would just do as you're told, everything would be OK.
Hmm, let's break this word "programmer" down, shall we? It would imply by it's root that it is one who "programs." In the current context, it would be one who writes code that get compiled into programs. So, by writing this web board in Perl, CmdrTaco is indeed a programmer.
... Taco may have indeed graduated with a CS degree).
Now, if it was originally stated that he was a Computer Scientist, then you would be correct in your statement that CmdrTaco is not a Computer Scientist (well, as far as I know
Not all CS grads are programmers (some go into that branch of hell known as "consultancy") and not all programmers need to be CS grads (recall the COBOL "boot camps" that would teach you how to "fix" the Y2K bugs in 6 weeks w/o any prior coding experience).
-FlashfireUVA
*insert favorite witticism here*
"'While we prefer to resolve these types of disputes without litigation, we felt we have no other choice but to assert our intellectual property rights in courts. In addition to filing the lawsuits, Sunonwealth has sent major computer and electronic equipment manufacturers and distributors letters demanding that they cease and desist from infringing Sunonwealth's patents.'
Sure its nice to poke fun at what may seem as minimal as a fan after all, you could just open up your case, slide it next to an air conditioner or create your own jigsawed case with multiple fans blowing from all sides.
Fact: this company has every right to sue since they have the patents over the product.
Fact: they did try to resolve it without resorting to going the legal route which did not work.
Fact: ADDA has created a 'misleading public record' of the patent case filed against ADDA
If it were your own thought which someone was stealing and you were losing money you would be just as upset, so why parody the company for being concerned over what ALL companies underlying factor is business.
irreverency
It is better to be feared than loved
So, all I do is install a spoon on top of my CPU socket. Then I put my dope there (I rig my spoon real tight, because I spent my rent check on that shit), cook it up, and shoot in into my scrotum (I ran out of veins to tap).
Then I listen to Better than Ezra and node all night. I love heroin.
Jab a needle today.
Apollogies if this was on slashdot already, I must have missed it.
Are you kidding? To lawyers and corporations, lawsuits like this are a breeze. As long as they get paid, they'll be "fans" of this.
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1,2,3,4 Moderation has to Go!
Well, trying to collect royalties on that basis is NOT going to work.
If you saw my posting on the message thread about Rambus, I said that the famous U.S. v. United Shoe Machinery Company case from 1945 put an end to this way to keep down competitors. What Rambus is trying to do is exactly what United Shoe tried to do to its competition back in the first half of the 20th Century--use its critical patents on shoe-making machinery to destroy the competition. It would be akin to Eli Lilly enforcing its patent on Prozac to the point that no competitive product (Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Remeron, etc.) could come to market.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Or, perhaps, some technologies that would probably be covered by munitions export control laws in the US (I'm thinking of the technology that got Toshiba in trouble some years ago involving ultra-quiet submarine props).
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CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Wait a minute...reading what is supposed to be "patented", these are things that have been in common use for quite a while now...they patented something that could be learned in any basic course on physics.
Besides, isn't this fighting over something that's pretty stupid anyways? I mean, who really pays that much attention to their CPU fans anyways? No matter what kind I buy, they seem to last about a year and then the bearings go out in them in. And most of these off-the-shelf pieces of crap you buy at CompUSA or Best Buy or places like that don't even have CPU fans. They're able to get to that sub-$1000 price point by cutting corners, and one place they cut corners is the CPU fan...they just put a nice big heat sink on it and hope that'll be good enough. They figure if your system has random crashes and you're buying one of those (meaning you usually a consumer), you won't give a rats ass...most of those pieces of junk have random crashes, hangs, reboots, BSODs, etc. because of inadequate CPU cooling.
My journal has hot
but if the patenter gave CT a cut, they would be acknowledging the existance of this story -- which would be prior art.
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
Ahhh. Doh! That is, indeed, very stupid.
Presumably ADDA simply don't have enough money to make suing them worthwhile. Next time I'll save some bandwidth for vital Napster traffic.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Yes. Why fry a $500 CPU because a $5 fan fails? The BIOS in my work computers are configured to check factors such as CPU temperature, fan RPM etc, and to shut down on serious problems.
"there are at least a few things about metallurgy, magnetics, lubrication and airflow which are neither obvious nor easy to understand, but are certainly required for engineering an efficient, well-designed, and long-lasting fan"
So what? Designing a good fan might be difficult, but you can't patent something just because it was difficult to make - you can only patent something that is a new and original technique. It may have been difficult to build, but if the basic principles are exactly the same as in Joe Cheap Fan, you can't patent it. You may be able to patent a new type of design for a fan, if the design had something new, original and creative in it to distinguish it technologically from Joe Cheap Fan. Simply making all the parts from better materials, and changing the shape of the blades, does NOT constitute an original technique. A "design" maybe, but that is a different IP concept to the patent. You also may be able to patent a new, original process that you'd come up with for building fans. I haven't read the article, so I'm not sure what their patent is about. Disclaimer, IANAL.
The USPO issues patents for business ideas. ." and submit the patent.
Taco, just rewrite your idea starting with "The method of . .
If you think I'm kidding, you are sadly mistaken.
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"Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
As patents go.
If you build a mousetrap you can patent it. Nobody else can DUPLICATE your mousetrap and sell it while the patent is active. However, it does not prevent anyone else from creating their own mousetraps or even improving on your model. You can't patent the concept of a mousetrap, only the exact mousetrap.
You can't patent an icon, although I could imagine granting a patent for a specific icon design. Mac icons are typically different than windows icons. If its THAT damned important, then fine. Patent the damn thing. But I can still create my own icons. They can still serve the same function. You can't deny me that.
A specific algorithm? I suppose. All algorithms that produce a specific effect? Nope.
Of course, this probably isn't the way it is, and its not even the way I'd like it to be. But it does to some degree make sense.
Then again, I'm in the process of installing windows, so my mental condition at the moment is questionable, so please disregard this comment.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Let's say that I heard about the Venturi effect in a physics course. Can I go patent the Venturi (sucking/swirling) effect in motorcycle carburetors, and force Suzuki, Yamaha, Honda, Kawasaki, Harley-Davidson, and other motorcycle makers to pay me for royalties?
Tell me this isn't similar to using heat sinks with waves and cutouts so as to increase surface area and heat dissipation efficiency?
Do you see a pattern here? If you provide a good or a service, you want demand. Marketing creates demand.
Joe
Perhaps we should collectively patent the "business model" of patenting something trivial and obvious then making money by suing anyone trying to do honest business using our "patented" technieque. Then each time one of these cases comes up, we sue the plaintif for violation of our patented business model.
Admittedly, Rambus has clear prior art, but that hasn't mattered a tinker's dam since the PO reforms...
All right, you have up to a year to keep things secret, which isn't too bad when it takes between a year to two years for the US patent office to grant a patent. I'm using the typical time period that the company I am working for gets its patents granted - probably could be a bit faster if you've got people who know how to work the system really well. Chances are, it isn't exposed at all before you can get the patent.
Not that it really matters, since you can word things so that it doesn't show up on a prior art search looking for particular keywords, or is buried in the middle of so many other similar crap patents with such obtuse language that somebody could see the claims 3 times without twigging to the fact that they've got a match.
Please show me a US pending patent - oh that's right, you can't. Silly me. Kind of hard to do any prior art searches on those, isn't it? Wasn't I just talking about that?
Patents are _supposed_ to encourage real, society-benefiting innovation by giving people the chance to make some money off them w/o worrying about people horning in on their action. And when the monopoly period runs out, the entire society can benefit from the innovation.
The current system seems to define innovation as minor semantic differences from existing patent descriptions, and encourages large entities to use large portfolios of these barely-differentiated "innovations" to stifle small competitors or to defend themselves from other similarly-minded large entities. They can also tie up good ideas far longer than the already-too-long 17 years (or was it 20 now?) by extending the patent with a small variation. This situation does NOT seem to be in the general society's best interests.
The granting of a patent should only be TRULY innovative, not just based on some minor semantical differences, and it should be fairly RARE. Trying to reserve every possible combination of ideas for implementing some basic concept for private individuals is not good for the public.
I wish people would remember that the end goal of patents (and intellectual property in general) is to provide long-term benefits for the society. The _short-term_ benefit is for an individual, but only because it's supposed to encourage people to think up ideas which can be used for the society. If you've got a system which _prevents_ the society as a whole (not just some of the society) from ever effectively using those ideas - well, that system needs fixing.
As an aside, I also have some issues about corporate entities, which are merely legal definitions, owning something like "intellectual" property (and being able to deny it to the individuals whose brains actually generated those ideas). But that's a whole other can of worms.
1. Patents pending are secret. You could build an entire company based on a few ideas, only to find out when someone else's patent is granted that you have to pay them royalties which you didn't take into account before.
2. There are WAY too many patents, and not terribly well categorized & indexed, for all but the largest patent-searching organizations to be absolutely sure they've covered all the possibilities (which costs money). In other words, even if there IS a patent which you're violating, there's a good chance you'll never find it in the noise - but if you're successful, you can bet that the patent holder is going to be giving you a call.
Also falling into this category, are patents which have been made so broad, that any search based on the SPECIFIC details of an implementation are going to completely miss those claims in that patent - but the patentholder probably isn't going to miss you.
3. Prior art doesn't need to be patented - and thus will not show up until somebody needs to put the kibosh on your patent.
As a patent searcher, you should be aware of all this - it's your job to make sure there are no OBVIOUS competing patents, but I doubt you'd guarantee your boss your paycheck for the next year that you haven't missed something.
At least some companies get their US patents FIRST, then use those patents (and the "art" associated with the patents) as leverage to get patents in other countries (assisted by the international treaties which have been signed to allow the "prior art" in one country's patent system to invalidate a patent filed in another country's). Therefore, the pending patent is secret until granted.
No, it's a fault with the patent system. It's become pretty much inaccessible except to those people who specialize in searching it, and even then you have people who specialize in searching for particular kinds of patents.
While you can argue that this kind of complexity creates new jobs (like yours, for instance), my feeling is that those kinds of jobs represent the inefficiency of the system.
That's a few thousand PER search (and I assume you usually don't batch search for hundreds of potential patents at a time). While this is peanuts for medium to large size corporations, it adds up pretty fast for individuals & small businesses, representing a bigger chunk of their "survival" funds than for the larger organizations. Kind of like a "regressive tax" on innovation.
Last I heard, small businesses were still more important to the economic engine than even most of the largest companies. From a societal viewpoint, it seems to make more sense to make things more efficient for the small businesses rather than the larger organizations. (I am aware that most of the corporate lobbyists are not being paid to share my views.)
I extended my thoughts slightly to the general difficulties of ensuring a good result for prior art searching. And while I congratulate you on your thoroughness for searching both patent & non-patent art, it has been made abundantly clear that many organizations applying for patents only do enough searching (usually in the patent database itself) to ensure that the Patent Office will give them the patent (i.e., implementation stated the exact same way has not already been patented), then use whatever legal resources are necessary to make the patent worth something (by intimidating others into paying license fees, or using the patent as a defense against predatory patent-abusers).
Hardware patents indeed provide a meaningful purpose still - and they promote innovation. They provide investors with a return on their money for developing new hardware and financing the setup of a manufacturing plant.
Software patents are our enemy. If we want people to listen to us, we have to at least be consistent. --
Twivel
Not on one count, but on two. First, who cares? They're just fans. Second:
> Sunonwealth Electric Machine Industry's suit stems from alleged patent violations of one of the company's competitors, which sells miniature fans that Creative and nVidia incorporate into graphics cards as GPU coolers.
Uh, why not go after the company that makes the infringing fans instead of the companies that use them? It makes no more sense for them to go after Creative and nVidia than it would for them to go after the consumers that use the cards with the offending fans.
How much money can you *actually* spend researching fans like this? It's not like they're even really small, like those ones we read about not too long ago on /.. These are still normal sized, black plastic FANS. I'm not trying to say they don't have a legitamate case, but lets not let them hype it up like they spent $20 million on research or something.
Not quite. nVidia and Creative aren't being sued for buying the fans, they're being sued for importing them. Reading between the lines a bit here, it sounds as though ADDA is probably making and selling the fans in a country that has very weak, if any, patent protection. If they don't directly do business somewhere that does have strong patent protection, Sunonwealth can't get results by suing them directly, because they won't be able to collect on any judgment that they win. The article makes it sound as though that's already happened, in fact. Instead they have to go after the companies that buy the fans and import them into countries that do have strong patent laws. This is like suing a company that imports illegal copies of DVDs; you can't sue the people doing the copying because the country where they're based will laugh at you, so you have to go after the importer.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
However, it does have some similarities to rocket science. First of all, balance is all important. Second, inertia counts. Third, if it breaks while you're using it, the result could be catastrophic, causing other systems to fail.
--
ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Fans cool the latest 50 W processors from AMD and Intel. Fans cool overclocked beasts like the NVIDIA (TNT|GeForce) [12] Ultra.
The G4 Cube makes do without a fan. My K6-3+ can probably do without one, although the power supply is not immune.
They're just fans...well those fans cool your processor. Try making do without them. And a lot of people make a living designing and building the fans. Fans are just another of those millions of tiny mechanisms that make modern life just about about bearable.
That would be great, but if all the gigantic muscle-bound highly paid killers became lawyers, who would play professional sports and entertain us?
Unless of course we just televised the deathmatches...yeah, that's entertaining enough. And we'd always have the XFL to fall back on (heh)
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Let me give you the lowdown
Don't I know it. As I've alluded previously, there are for-pay databases which address exactly this issue. But I'd be much happier if they weren't necessary.
If you have a suggestion how that issue can be improved, I'd love to hear it.
Please show me a US pending patent - oh that's right, you can't. Silly me. Kind of hard to do any prior art searches on those, isn't it? Wasn't I just talking about that?
Yes, you were, and now we've come full circle in the discussion. In case you've forgotten, here's a summary:
I suppose this might be more of an issue with regards to software patents; since those are allowed only in the US, people don't apply for software patents anywhere else. In my field it's not a huge issue.
[Long rant about intended benefits of patents to society and what should be considered novel deleted.]
I must have misunderstood. From your earlier post I thought you were complaining about the way patents are enforced. Would it be more accurate to say that you are displeased with the way patents are applied for and granted (in which case I agree with you to some extent) and not with the way that patents (if they're good patents in the first place) are enforced?
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Patents are public information. It's not as if the patenting company can keep it secret, only to announce the existence of a patent when they decide to file the lawsuit.
If the other companies are in fact infringing the patents in question, they should have known about it beforehand.
I know, because I do patent searching for a Fortune 500 company precisely to make sure there aren't competing patents on a technology before we begin development.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
When looking at a patent, you should always go immediately to the claims:
5,967,763
What is claimed is:
1. A positioning device for a miniature fan, comprising:
-
a coil seat including a plurality of annularly spaced poles, each pole having a radially extending stem and terminating with a circumferential arcuate section, each stem having a winding wound therearound, each arcuate section having a first end edge and a second end edge;
- a circuit board securely connected to the coil seat; and,
- a sensor element mounted on the circuit board, the sensor element being located on a vertical line extending from one of the first end edge and the second end edge of one of the poles so that the sensor element is aligned with the one of the first end edge and the second end edge.
2. The positioning device according to claim 1, wherein the pole having the first end edge thereof aligned with the sensor element has a first mark means formed thereon, and the sensor element has a second mark means formed thereon which is aligned with the first mark means when mounting the sensor element onto the circuit board to assure that the sensor element is located on the vertical line.3. The positioning device according to claim 2, wherein the circuit board includes a notch defined therein for securely receiving the sensor element.
4. The positioning device according to claim 3, wherein the circuit board includes a third mark means aligned with the second mark means to provide a reference for mounting the sensor element in the notch by aligning with the second mark means of the sensor element with the third mark means.
5. The positioning device according to claim 1, wherein the pole having second end edge thereof aligned with the sensor element has a first mark means formed thereon, and the sensor element has a second mark means formed thereon which is aligned with the first mark means when mounting the sensor element onto the circuit board to assure that the sensor element is located on the vertical line.
6. The positioning device according to claim 5, wherein the circuit board includes a notch defined therein for securely receiving the sensor element.
7. The positioning device according to claim 6, wherein the circuit board includes a third mark means aligned with the second mark means to provide a reference for mounting the sensor element in the notch by aligning with the second mark means of the sensor element with the third mark means.
6,109,892
What is claimed is:
1. A positioning device for a miniature fan, comprising:
-
a coil seat including an axle tube, an upper polar plate assembly, a lower polar plate assembly, a winding mounted between the upper polar plate assembly and the lower polar plate assembly, the lower plate assembly including a front end edge and a rear end edge; and
- a circuit board mounted to the axle tube and including a sensor element adapted to activate a rotor, the sensor element located on a vertical line extending from one of said end edges of the lower polar plate assembly along a direction parallel to a longitudinal axis of the axle tube.
2. The positioning device according to claim 1, wherein the circuit board includes a notch defined therein for receiving the sensor element.3. The positioning device according to claim 1, wherein the coil seat has a first mark formed thereon, and the sensor element has a second mark formed thereon which is aligned with the first mark so as to assure that the sensor element is located on the vertical line.
4. The positioning device according to claim 3, wherein the circuit board includes a third mark to be aligned with the first mark and the second mark to assure that the sensor element is located on the vertical line.
6,114,785
What is claimed is:
1. A positioning device for a miniature fan, comprising;
-
a coil seat including an axle tube, an upper polar plate assembly, a lower polar plate assembly, and a winding mounted between the upper polar plate assembly and the lower polar plate assembly, the upper polar plate assembly including an end edge,
- a circuit board mounted to the axle tube and including a sensor element adapted to activate a rotor, and
- structural elements situated on a vertical line extending from the end edge of the upper polar plate in a direction parallel to a longitudinal axis of the axle tube,
- wherein said structural elements include said end edge of the upper polar plate assembly and said sensor element, and
- wherein said end edge of the upper polar plate and said sensor element are thereby aligned with each other by being located on said vertical line extending from the end edge of the upper polar plate assembly along a direction parallel to a longitudinal axis of the axle tube.
2. The positioning device according to claim 1, further comprising a first mark formed on the coil seat and a second mark formed on the sensor element, said second mark being aligned with the first mark so as to assure that the sensor element is located on the line.3. The positioning device according to claim 1, wherein the lower polar plate assembly includes a notch defined therein in which the sensor element is received.
4. The positioning device according to claim 1, wherein the circuit board includes a notch defined therein for receiving the sensor element.
5. The positioning device according to claim 2, wherein the circuit board includes a third mark to be aligned with the first mark and the second mark to assure that the sensor element is located on the line.
Also keep in mind that each individual numbered claim is like a mini-patent in its own right; however, within each numbered claim, all listed elements must be present for infringement to occur.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Because they're also selling the fans. If you sell a patented technology without the patent holder's permission, whining "but I didn't make it" won't get you off the hook.
Can the people who *use* cards with allegedly infringing fans also be sued?
Yes, in the sense that anyone can be sued any time for anything.
Is it likely? Probably not. Maybe if you're generating a profit from them in one way or another.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Only in the US, and anything big is not going to be patented only in the US. You don't think I search only for US patents, do you?
2. There are WAY too many patents, and not terribly well categorized & indexed, for all but the largest patent-searching organizations to be absolutely sure they've covered all the possibilities (which costs money). In other words, even if there IS a patent which you're violating, there's a good chance you'll never find it in the noise - but if you're successful, you can bet that the patent holder is going to be giving you a call.
And what do you propose to do about this? How is this the fault of the company with the original patent?
Further, a prior art search costs a few thousand dollars, in the patent searcher's time and in the cost of searching for-pay, proprietary databases (which alleviate a lot of the indexing problems you cite with the free databases). Nothing to sneeze at, to be sure, but hardly something available only to "the largest patent-searching organizations," as you claim. Before you spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on developing a new technology, doesn't it make sense to spend a few thousand to make sure no one else has patented it already?
3. Prior art doesn't need to be patented - and thus will not show up until somebody needs to put the kibosh on your patent.
I thought we were discussing the alleged "predatory practices" of corporations with patents, not the difficulty of enforcing your own patents, so this is not germane to the issue. In any case, non-patent prior art will show up, as a competent prior art search (such as I would do) covers both patent and non-patent art.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
My company is not in the computer tech field. In the interest of privacy and partial anonymity, I do not care to say what field they are in.
The point is, when patents are overly broad no amount of research is going to discover whether or not something infringes until it gets through the court system.
I don't deny that many patents being issued in the computer/software field seem to be overly broad (but since that's not my area of expertise, I can't say for sure). The point of the original poster seemed to be that companies somehow keep their patents secret until they decide they want to enforce them, and it was that point, and only that point, to which I was responding.
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Simply untrue. Once you file a patent application in one country, you have a one-year grace period to file in any other country--after that your first patent application counts as prior art in the other countries you would seek to get a patent in!
(assisted by the international treaties which have been signed to allow the "prior art" in one country's patent system to invalidate a patent filed in another country's).
The international treaties may have standardized this practice among all developed countries, but in most countries this was the case even before the treaties: just as both patents and non-patent literature constitute prior art, documents published both in the country in which the patent is applied for and outside constitute prior art.
Are you seriously arguing against this practice? Are you seriously suggesting that if someone in France has invented something but patented it only in France, that I should be allowed to patent it in the US?
Therefore, the pending patent is secret until granted.
Oh please. Here is one it took me about 15 seconds to find. There's thousands of published pending patent applications.
it has been made abundantly clear that many organizations applying for patents only do enough searching (usually in the patent database itself) to ensure that the Patent Office will give them the patent (i.e., implementation stated the exact same way has not already been patented),
I certainly don't deny that the USPTO often does a sloppy job of examining patent applications
then use whatever legal resources are necessary to make the patent worth something (by intimidating others into paying license fees, or using the patent as a defense against predatory patent-abusers).
Excuse me, but I thought that's what patents were for? I'm afraid I'm not clear on your position--are you saying all patents by definition are a bad thing, or are you arguing against the way some companies enforce their patents? If the latter, how are they supposed to do it other than "'intimidating' others into paying license fees or using the patent as a defense against predatory patent abusers?" If you are not against patents in general, what would you suggest would be the appropriate way for companies to enforce valid patents?
Never take moderation advice from sigs, including this one.
Usefulness, obviousness, and absense of prior art. Is there a clear application, is it trivial, and has someone else already discovered it?
Unfortunately the process pits domain experts and highly paid lawyers against underpaid patent examiners with an impossible mandate.
So would somebody please suggest a workable alternative, perhaps akin to peer review?
Not everyone at once, now...
Some specialty cooling shops carry most/all of their lightweight plastic line, and you can probably find a bunch of the heavy duty aluminum ones at surplus stores like Ax-Man in the Twin Cities area. Ooh, I love that place.
--
I understand the luddite primal instincts of some slashdot users but they are not right in this case. Designing a silent and highly efficient fan requires some serious aerodinamics, sound propagation and thermal conduction research. It is IMHO harder than designing a memory bus (no fionger pointing at favourite targerts). And "one click" bogousities should not even be compared to the case.
So IMHO a patent on a good fan design has merit.
If you still do not believe me take a golden orb and compare it some cheepo piece of junk. Just look at the blade shapes...
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
We are not talking about a couple of people in their back rooms making water cooling kits, flogging them across the net and suing each other over - I dunno - a proprietary hose clip or something.
This is nVidia who are having their arses kicked. What they've done is pulled a fan apart, copied it, and made their own to save, what, US$0.10 per unit on graphics cards that are US$200 - 300 - upwards? And don't forget these things are a shedload more expensive outside the US.
Tightarses, honestly. Fuck'em. Sue their sorry backsides off.
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
that I'm a very big fan of this!!! oh, I kill me!
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
"Sunonwealth has made huge investments in developing..." blah blah blah.
I'm don't really understand what their patent covers, but my best guess is the idea of making notches on a circuit board with which to align and mount a small fan and associated sensor (and I'm not sure what the sensor does, except that it can turn the fan on). It would be interesting to have a company representative translate their patent claims into language a layperson could understand.
5,967,763 Positioning devices for a sensor element of a miniature fan
A positioning device for a miniature fan includes a coil seat including a number of annularly spaced poles each having a radially extending stem and a circumferential arcuate section. Each stem has a winding wound therearound, and each arcuate section has a first end edge and a second end edge. A circuit board is securely connected to the coil seat and includes a sensor element mounted thereon. The sensor element is located on a vertical line extending from one of the first end edge and the second end edge of one of the poles.
6,109,892 Positioning device for a sensor element of a miniature fan
A positioning device for a miniature fan includes a coil seat having an axle tube, an upper polar plate assembly, a lower polar plate assembly, and a winding mounted between the upper polar plate assembly and the lower polar plate assembly. A circuit board is mounted to the axle tube and includes a sensor element for activating a rotor. The sensor element is located on a vertical line extending from an end edge of the lower polar plate assembly along a direction parallel to a longitudinal axis of the axle tube.
6,114,785 Positioning device for a sensor element of a miniature fan
A positioning device for a miniature fan includes a coil seat having an axle tube, an upper polar plate assembly, a lower polar plate assembly, and a winding mounted between the upper polar plate assembly and the lower polar plate assembly. A circuit board is mounted to the axle tube and includes a sensor element for activating rotor. The sensor element is located on a line extending from an end edge of the upper polar plate assembly along a direction parallel to a longitudinal axis of the axle tube.
35 USC section 271(a):
(emphasis added)
Yes, if this patent holds up in court, Sunonwealth could theoretically sue you for using one of the cards with one of the fans in question! It's just not usually practical to sue the end users.
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Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delenda est Windoze
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
So instead they use a very high speed stepper motor and a circuit board to drive it.
That's why they cose $9 and not 90 cents.
Saying a CPU fan is a trivial device is not accurate.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
We take them for granted, but just think about what a chipset fan does...Runs 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (at least mine does), makes almost no noise, and only wears out after several years. That's at least 17,250 hours of use, continually spinning at 7200rpm.
Now consider that out of all the fan manufacturers, Sunon is well-known as a one of the best, supplying not only normal fans, but also ultra-high-output and/or super-quiet varieties.
Scoff scoff, just a fan.
And CmdrTaco is "just a programmer."
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4-star general in a one-man army.
I don't think anyone agrees that patents should be completely abolished
Some people would disagree.
Either way, the real issue is the predatory practice. I patent something, wait until everybody else uses or develops the same technology and then I slap them with an infringement lawsuit.
This is pretty much blackmail, because it's not like the defendants can change the technology. They invested an awful lot of money in a technology they can't use anymore and they'll have to pay through the nose in 'royalties' to the so-called innovator.
This may not be the case here, but there are way too many examples. Rambus allowed SDRAM to become a memory standard and then decided it had a patent on it. AltaVista has just discovered it owns the very concept of a search engine. BT has decided after decades that it invented hyperlinks and is entitled to compensation from everybody. Gaming the system has gotten out of hand. Anytime some company sues the entire industry there's something suspicious up.
Someone needs to write a perl script to take this story, and s/x/y/g the names and technologies, and then feed every company and technology into it.
I know it's been mentioned before, but there's something better-- it covers far more than just patent lawsuits. That's right, folks, the slashdot story generator.
From personal experience, don't bother trying to respond to him about this stuff directly. He never reads it and doesn't care. Chris
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I know that there are some wierd patent lawsuits on /., but where do we draw the line between good business and unfair maliciousness? I don't think anyone agrees that patents should be completely abolished, so somethings are patentable. Although it seems a little late for pushing for patent violation on the fan issue, we should definately try to keep in mind that some patents are real and should be respected.
-Moondog
- US5967763: Positioning devices for a sensor element of a miniature fan
- US6109892: Positioning device for a sensor element of a miniature fan
- US6114785: Positioning device for a sensor element of a miniature fan
Now it looks like they patented various iterations of a sensor element attached to a fan. To me it seems frivolous on the surface, but since I'm not into PC components I'm not a 100% sure since evrything seems obvious in hind sight.Has ANYONE (ok, I know at least one person has) considered the possiblity that Sunonwealth has actually patented new and significant technology, and that's what they're trying to protect? Is it just SLIGHTLY possible that ADDA, who has a really big black mark in the patent law courts already, might have infringed a valid and worthwhile patent again?
Come on people, at least find out what the patent is about before damning a company to the lowest depths of hell for defending it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban