Bright LCD Patent Dispute

pcp_ip writes "Honeywell filed suit Wednesday against 34 companies (including, Apple, Dell, Sony, Kodak, Fuji et al.) for infringment of patent 5,280,371. The patent for "a directional diffuser for a liquid crystal display" was filed on January 1994 and enables "a display to produce a brighter image without requiring additional power." Honeywell is looking for an injunction to prevent the defendants from continuing to infringe its patent, and for "damages adequate to compensate them for Defendants infringement." So much for LCD prices coming down! Where's OLED when you need it?"

Comments

But...

[ivan256]

Apple and Dell don't even make LCD panels... All they do OEM panels from various manufacturers and put them in a plastic housing with some accessory electronics...

Surely it would be the manufacturer that's infringing, right?

All your LCDs

[Anonymous Coward]

are belong to Honeywell.

Set us up the patent.

Yet another example of patent BS.

[SeanTobin]

From reading the patent it looks like Honeywell actually had a decent and possibly novel invention. I say possibly because the solution they propose is obvious to anyone trying to solve their particular problem, however no one before had tried to solve their problem hence its originality. Now... as to exactly what Honeywell's problem is...

They decided that in displays used in situations like fighter jets, air traffic control towers and commercial airlines, having displays "bleed" out of the angle of view is not desirable. For instance, you don't want a reflection of your cockpit display in the corner of your eye from the canopy. They designed a "system of lenses" to reduce this out-of-angle light and redirect it to viewing angles.

The problem seems to come when they filed for the patent on the system. Instead of describing the system as a way to limit/redirect unused/undesired light they wrote it as a system to increase the amount of desired light. My guess as to why is because it's much easier to sue someone trying to make their displays brighter than it is to find someone trying to make their displays darker.

The reason I say that they intended to sue/collect royalties from every manufacturer was because they went ahead and sued every single manufacturer. They did not attempt to license their technology (but of course they wouldn't... Because Honeywell also manufacturers LCD's. They'd love to put their competitors out of business.) This is all just an abuse of the patent/court system to try and get ahead... too bad it works so well.

Oh, and I have some prior art. You see, I'm sure someone had an LCD with some backlights about 10 years ago, and wanted it to be brighter in the area they were viewing... so they put a MIRROR behind it. What a novel idea! They should have patented it.

Links to news sites

[tearmeapart]

Another day of sloppy articles. Here are a few links to news sites concerning this item:

• Google search
• CNN
• CNET
• MacWorld
• Computer World
• The Register

Valid patent for once

[eagl]

Maybe I'm going against the grain here, but I am pleased to see a patent for an actual physical implementation of a technology being defended, instead of all the bogus so-called "software patents" we've been hearing about for the last few years. Some patents are quite reasonable and legit, but with all the st00pid bogus patents getting all the press lately even legit patents are getting a bad rap.

Kudos for Honeywell, a company you don't hear about throwing it's weight around all the time, defending a patent that describes a process and physical implementation that actually DOES something. If they'd patented a method for vertical alignment of viewing sensors in front of a display apparatus to maximize contrast and enhance look-angle (ie. the up-down adjustment on your office chair), then we'd have reason to throw rotten fruit, but this patent seems to be a legitimate technological concept.

Give them a break... Rightous patents should be defended rigorously or there is no incentive to do core research. Don't let the flood of worthless patents or the incompetence of the patent examiners destroy the legitimate use of the patent system.

Re:Karma for Kodak

[dougmc]

To be fair, Kodak probably learned about patents first hand when Polaroid sued them (and won $900 million). Then, to add insult to injury, since Kodak couldn't make film for their instant cameras anymore, they had to spend about $500 million more dollars paying off those who had bought them.

Ouch.

Though I expect that Sun will ultimately prevail when they appeal this case. Still, the only real winners when patents get involved are the lawyers.

They do make them.

[RiffRafff]

"...why werent they producing them?

They do produce them. They are used in their APEX integrated cockpit. Besides, if you google for "Honeywell" and "LCD" you'll see that most of the hits are for companies licensing LCD technology from Honeywell, like Samsung, NEC, and Toshiba.