City Sued Over Smart Meter-Related Patent (chicagotribune.com)

New submitter wb8nbs writes: Florida patent troll Atlas LLC has filed a suit against the municipality of Naperville, Illinois (paywalled). Atlas claims infringement of their patent on wireless communication where a hub node controls remote node responses. In 2011-2013 Naperville, which owns the local electrical utility network, installed Smart Meters on nearly all customers in its serving area, a move that was bitterly opposed by a small group of residents. The Naperville Smart Meter network uses Zigbee protocol to return readings to their fiber optic collection network. The Atlas suit could have long range implications to the Internet of Things, but it appears they have sued and lost a similar case in Florida.

Comments

Which side am I supposed to be on?!?

[tlambert]

Which side am I supposed to be on?!?

On one side, we have Smart Meters, which are evil, and intended to provide differential rates do that the electric utility can pay you less for the solar you generate than the non-solar you consume, so they get paid the same amount, as when you didn't have solar, and it saves their antique business model...

On the other side, it's a patent troll, engaging in rent seeking on something they pobably acquired in a bankruptcy, and who produces nothing useful to society at all, and is just a drag on innovation in general...

WHICH SIDE?!?!?!?!

I'm so confused....

Re:Which side am I supposed to be on?!?

[penguinoid]

Which side am I supposed to be on?!?

Whenever you hear "patent troll", substitute in "patent reform activist". So a "patent reform activist" is promoting solar power while demonstrating the brokenness of the patent system.

Re:Which side am I supposed to be on?!?

[langelgjm]

Smart meters aren't evil.

Differential rates for solar power the customer generates versus electricity consumed from the utility don't really require smart meters, either, at least not the kind commonly deployed. Plus, the vast majority of homes and businesses where smart meters are being deployed don't generate their own power, so it's silly to suggest this is the intention for deploying them.

Actual reasons for deploying smart meters include better demand monitoring and management, fast and accurate outage reporting so that service can be restored more quickly, and better customer service - since you as a consumer can now find out exactly how much you're using and when.

I had a smart meter when I lived in Connecticut, and I loved it. I wrote a script to log in to my utility's website and get my daily consumption data, so I could track my consumption over time and make energy-conserving decisions. We also had natural gas, but in my best month I was able to lower consumption to 186 kWh, about a fifth of the US average.

I now live in New Jersey, and our so-called 'ratepayer advocate' is rabidly anti-smart meter because she doesn't want to permit any increase in utility bills, even to pay for infrastructure investment. It took Hurricane Sandy to convince her to allow some infrastructure improvements that PSEG had been asking for a long time, but still no smart meters.

Re:Which side am I supposed to be on?!?

[mikael]

That was before solar, wind came along and home-owners being able to sell energy back into the grid. Once supply exceeds demand, the utilities are no longer able to make their bumper profits when demand exceeds supply. Not even when they are trying to shut down the cheapest energy suppliers such as coal, buying up the surviving companies and selling the coal to China (Peabody Coal).

Re:Which side am I supposed to be on?!?

[Darinbob]

You seem to misunderstand smart meters. Differential rates are only one small thing they can do which is used by only a small number of utilities. If they have differential pricing for solar, they will do it whether or not they have smart meters. The old 50's era meters are never coming back, they were very inaccurate. The newer meters have extra features, more things are measured (voltage for example, you'd be surprised how many neighborhoods have the wrong voltage), and they can discover if there are problems early and be proactive. The old method was amazingly stupid; they would have no idea at all how and where their electricity was being used except for a once a month reading (and they won't go read it if it's snowing, raining, you have a mean dog, etc, so they will estimate instead). Smart meters showed up once the utilities had to be more accountable, were encouraged/required to conserve electricity, had to justify rate increases before a PUC, etc.

Re: Which side am I supposed to be on?!?

[Applehu Akbar]

A legitimate concern about smart meters could be privacy. Because a smart meter can take multiple readings during a day, rather than one manual reading a month, it gives the utility a lot of information about users' personal habits. In fact, smart meters are part of Smart Grid, a utility initiative to incorporate medium-scale renewables into their systems. The idea is that if a utility is going to have to deal with generated inputs that change minute by minute, it needs to have the same fine-scale information about its loads.

The next step in Smart Grid is going to evoke national controversy: a smart meter that can selectively turn on and off each user's major appliances. If renewables are ever going to be a major element of the power grid, this next generation of smart meters will have to be deployed. When we lobby for small renewable sources, this is a consequence that most of us did not anticipate.

Meanwhile, the New Jersey ombudsman's objection is at least to a plausible scenario. The hippie-chich objection is to something purely imaginary.

Re:Which side am I supposed to be on?!?

[BitZtream]

On one side, we have Smart Meters, which are evil, and intended to provide differential rates do that the electric utility can pay you less for the solar you generate than the non-solar you consume, so they get paid the same amount, as when you didn't have solar, and it saves their antique business model...

Let me show you the multiple ways you're a nut job, and pay attention because the best one is last ...

They don't get to give you different rates because you're using solar, so your conspiracy theory is bunk. They (in every state I've lived in) are legally mandated to buy back power at the rate they sell it at, so changing the price doesn't really help them.

So if they lower it during the day, then businesses pay less for power and you make less back on your solar power, but the power company makes far less because the change in price from your dinky little solar operation is nothing compared to the millions of people consuming power in businesses during the day ... which they'll lose WAY more on due to any decrease they come up with in order to 'stick it' to solar power users.

It actually loses them more money than their 'antique' business model ... which, btw, they've been doing since before you were born or solar powered electricity was even a glimmer in someones eye ... so its pretty hard to draw the conclusion that they differential rates are based on if you have solar or not ...

And then draw in that the smart meters in question are just making it so they don't have to have a meter maid come read the meters ... If you wanted to just rip people off for solar, a simple clock would be effective enough and have it not only count total KWH, but do rating at the time of usage to account for lower prices during the day

And the best for last part:

Electricity costs MORE during the day, when you would be generating solar power, not less. Electricity is cheaper at night (in most areas) ...

But hey ... don't let reality make you look stupid, you're doing fine on your own.

You're only confused because you're a paranoid nut job.

OK I looked this up.

[hey!]

Here is the complaint: https://www.unitedstatescourts.org/federal/ilnd/318734/1-0.html.

Here is the patent in question: http://www.google.com/patents/US5371734.

Basically the patent describes a time division wireless networking scheme in which certain nodes orchestrate transmission and receiving time slots assigned to adjacent nodes. The claimed benefits of this scheme amount to these: bandwidth can be allocated to nodes dynamically, and nodes can extend battery life by turning off their receivers when it's not their turn to receive data. I have no strong opinions as to whether the networking scheme as so vaguely described in the patent is original enough to be patented, but the complaint is a different matter. It appears that Atlas IP LLC appears claiming that any system in which devices are polled and in which the devices may not be transmitting or receiving at any time infringes on this patent. If that is what the patent means, then clearly it's too obvious to be "original".

Re:OK I looked this up.

[viperidaenz]

That, and the patent is expired.
They bought an expired patent then went around looking for people that may have infringed before it expired.

There's gotta be a better way

[sirwired]

There should be a way to structure the patent laws so you can't sue somebody who bought a patented invention from somebody else. The idea that an end-user is fully liable for the development practices of an upstream company is ridiculous.

I realize such laws would be tricky to craft (an unscrupulous vendor could "buy" IP they don't own from a shell company or patsy), but the current way of doing things is resulting in far too many patent trolls pursuing mid-sized organizations that have enough money to make the suit worth it, but not so much they can actually afford patent litigation.

Maybe craft a law that if you want to go after end-users (instead of the organization carrying out the infringement), your maximum recovery will be a RAND licensing cost, and it better have some relation to how much you paid to develop/acquire the patented invention to begin with.