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Essential Is Getting Sued For Allegedly Stealing Wireless Connector Technology (gizmodo.com)
"Keyssa, a wireless technology company backed by iPod creator and Nest founder Tony Fadell, filed a lawsuit against Essential on Monday, alleging that the company stole trade secrets and breached their nondisclosure agreement," reports Gizmodo. Keyssa has proprietary technology that reportedly lets users transfer large files in a matter of seconds by holding two devices side by side. From the report: According to the lawsuit, Keyssa and Essential engaged in conversations in which the wireless tech company "divulged to Essential proprietary technology enabling every facet of Keyssa's wireless connectivity," all of which was protected under a non-disclosure agreement. More specifically, the lawsuit alleges that Keyssa "deployed a team 20 of its top engineers and scientists" to educate Essential on its proprietary tech, sending them "many thousands of confidential emails, hundreds of confidential technical documents, and dozens of confidential presentations." Essential ended this relationship after over 10 months and later told Keyssa that its engineers would use a competing chip in the Essential Phone. But Keyssa is accusing Essential of including techniques in its phone that were gleaned from their relationship, despite their confidentiality agreement. Central to this lawsuit is one of the Essential Phone's key selling points: the option to swap in modular add-ons, made possible thanks to the phone's unique cordless connector. In short, if Keyssa's claims hold water, then one of the phone's defining factors is a product of theft.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
This sort of thing really hacks me off. Keyssa's technology is just an extremely short range radio link. Being short range, they immediately gain massive channel SNR improvements while still remaining within RF regulatory limits. This naturally (as in, the fundamental laws of physics) allows them to push more data through the channel compared to a similar long-range, omni-directional RF link, and they will just be using a standard modulation scheme - possibly even a very inefficient one - to do that.
All the magical claims they make on their website are a direct consequence of physics - not some stupidity on behalf of the WIFI developers.
There is nothing magic about this. There is not even anything novel about this. At best they would have done some measurements/sims of the channel and applied an appropriate bunch of standard signal processing techniques to best deal with the channel characteristics, though I imagine that since the channel is so well defined (their system even slots together to mechanically hold the antenna in position) they barely even had to do this.
Why do we put up with this sort of junk as a society? There are plenty of companies that do not have particularly protectable technology (e.g. the numerous GPS chipset vendors) but compete and make money by having high quality, easy to use products that are more desirable than their competitors, or by offering better support. I'm sure that if Keyssa had a better product then their competitors at the right price they would be in the Essential phone right now.