Magnet Patent Suits

toybuilder writes: "Magnequench holds a key patent on high-power neodymium-iron-boron (Nd-Fe-B) magnets that they claim is worth almost 1/2 of the world's permanent magnet market. These magnets are in use everywhere including motors in CD/DVD drives and in actuators in camcorders. They are suing a whole lotta companies including Compaq and HP. You can see the AP newswire at Yahoo or read the company's press release."

Comments

How long has Compaq been making magnets?

[Redwire]

I really don't see why Compaq, Sony and every other tech manufacturer you can name should be sued because they're using the 'illegal' magnets in their products, unless they are actually manufacturing them. How much responsibility should a company have to audit their supplier? How can anyone be expected to make something if they have to keep going over their suppliers books?

Why stop here? What happens if I work for Compaq's Magnet Supplier, and I get sexually harassed while on the job. Shouldn't I be able to sue Compaq? Aren't they somehow responsible for... well, something?

If it's a valid case, sue the magnet manufacturers, not the 'end users' such as Compaq and Sony.

Re:I hope they don't make fridge magnets

[kzinti]

Those little magnets are just awesome. I've been salvaging magnets from failed and obsolete disk drives for years, and have a nice collection of these insanely strong critters. My best acquisition was a set of four that came out of a nine-platter SCSI drive.

I love handing a pair of these little magnets to an unsuspecting guest, and ask them to separate them for me. One guy actually told me they were glued together, until I showed him how to slide the magnets apart to separate them.

Another good trick to do with an old (but functional) drive, before you take its guts out: take the cover off, hook the drive up, and run fsck on its contents while you mess with its guts. Touch the center of the platter stack to slow them down. Use a marker to write on the spinning platters. Put your finger on the center of rotation of the arms the R/W heads are mounted on. See how much abuse the drive will take and still function (I was kind of surprised).

I also like to salvage the disk-platter assemblies and set them out as objets d'art. They're really quite pretty!

--Jim

The Redifinition of the American Dream

[FreeUser]

What we are witnessing, and living through, is the decline of our civilization. This country was founded on high ideals and moral principles. Sadly, the ultimate goal today is to ruthlessly make as much money as possible. The current rampant abuse of the patent system is just the tip of the iceberg.

At one time the "American Dream" had little to do with money directly. It used to be the notion that one could go to a free country and achieve everything they were capable of, without governmental hinderence. For some people this was the practice of their non-mainstream religion, for others it was the persuit of philosophies or studies suppressed elsewhere, for other the chance to explore the unknown, and, yes, for some it was the opportunity to persue wealth.

Now, the media have all come together and redefined the "American Dream" solely in terms of the persuit of wealth, even going so far as to equate it with winning the lottery (as if, prior to the 20th century, there had ever even been such an absurd notion).

At one time laws were intended to benefit society, and the production of wealth was but one component in an entire series of concepts which together were required to benefit society (others included free education, libraries, fire department and water services, land grants, etc.) This is not to say society was ideal, as at the same time there were horrific things going on (the enslavement of black Americans, the wholesale theft of land from native Americans, etc.), but only to point out that, at one time, laws and politicians were expected to serve the voting population of the country, and to a fair degree did so.

Now there isn't even the pretense of laws in the United States serving the American public, much less society as a whole. Is it any wonder, with our willingness as individuals (by and large) to sell every ideal down the river in the name of profit and income, that our government, as our representatives, behaves any differently?

Disgusting, yes, Reprehensible, yes. Self defeating and ultimately destructive (particularly with respect to government granted monopolies such as patents, copyrights, and other forms of IP), yes. But, given the direction the majority of the American people chose to go in 1980 and have continued toward since, hardly surprising. Fortunately for us, and the world, these sorts of things are self correcting, even if it means the US economy stagnating and even going third world before people become aware enough to start demanding the kinds of reforms which are necessary.

Re:I hope they don't make fridge magnets

[victim]

You would probably not want one as a fridge magnet. It would probably bend the front of your fridge as you pry it off.

If you ever have a hard drive go bad, you should get yourself a set of tiny torx drivers and disassemble it. You will find a pair of insanely strong magnets around the head positioning coil.

Watch your fingers, when those magnets take a notion to slam together they will pinch through your flesh.

note: the preceding should not be construed as instructions to bang your office mates computer up and down while operating in order to acquire a bad hard drive.

The decline

[Crusadio]

If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it...He who receives an idea from me, receives instructions himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should be spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature...Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property. --Thomas Jefferson

It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rather to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith. (Atlantic Works v. Brady, 1017 U.S. 192, 200 (1882)).

What we are witnessing, and living through, is the decline of our civilization. This country was founded on high ideals and moral principles. Sadly, the ultimate goal today is to ruthlessly make as much money as possible. The current rampant abuse of the patent system is just the tip of the iceberg.

Re:Recall?

[alarmo]

That'd be funny. The yahoo article did say "destruction of products owned by the defendants", though, so I wouldn't worry about your personal CDRW drive motor too much.

It does make you wonder how in the world everyone got to be using that magnet material without *realizing* it was under patent, though. There's gotta be a story there - maybe a "publish the method but forget to mention the patent" story a la LZW compression? Anyone have more info?

I hope they don't make fridge magnets

[oily pants]

Now I guess I'll have to pile all of my kid's art work on the floor next to the fridge.