Flat-Screen Makers Face Patent Lawsuits in U.S.

Elitist_Phoenix writes "Reuters reports two industrial manufacturers, Guardian Industries Corp. and Honeywell International Inc., have sued dozens of companies in the global PC and video display businesses in a U.S. federal court to try to recoup royalties on liquid-crystal technology.Guardian Industries, a maker of industrial glass, and Honeywell, known for making weapons systems, assert in filings in the U.S. District Court in Delaware that their intellectual property for liquid crystal displays, used in notebook computers, TVs, and cellular phones, have been infringed."

Comments

Re:Short summary :)

[gl4ss]

yes and this pretty much displays the stupidity of current patent laws in current world.

if you're into actually enforcing your patents it makes sense if you DON'T PRODUCE ANY PRODUCT OF YOUR OWN.

Re:They took someone else's invention in the first

[squiggleslash]

That's how patents work. The winner is the won who publishes first and gets the idea to the patent office.

This is why many people feel that the number of categories of things that can be patented should be as small as possible. If there are already incentives to invent in a particular sphere, there's no need for patents. In this case, it's hardware, and arguably the amount of investment needed to come up with and implement an idea is so high patents have some validity. Still sucks to be in that industry though as you suffer the risk of developing something and then finding that some guy got there first. You do the work and the investment, someone else (who, admittedly, also did the work and investment) gets to profit.