Patrick Tresch Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 (edited) Red now has a high-res 8K wheel that is claimed to be the sharpest wheel on the market. I would bet that it's heavily patented. I think you can't patent resolution ;-) but the tech used to do it. There are companies that uses the way of patents not to protect their inventions but to get rid of competition. They often patent processes already used in the industry but not yet patented. The only ones who gets bothered by this are the customers not taking advantage of healthy competition. Pat ps: I also was annoyed that wavelet compression of RAW was patented by RED (their great R3D CODEC), this could have opened a great way of compressing Raw files for other companies. But this was actually their invention (with the help of Assimilate I think at that time). Edited September 16, 2015 by Patrick Tresch Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Rose Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 There are companies that uses the way of patents not to protect their inventions but to get rid of competition. They often patent processes already used in the industry but not yet patented. Tough to do... Say company A gets a patent on a product made by or process used by company B, and then subsequently sues B for infringement. B simply has to show its records that they were making the product or using the process prior to the filing date of the application - their use or sale of the product is prior art that anticipates the patent, rendering it invalid. More typically, company A gets a very narrow patent on a minor improvement to B's process or product. Say, they make the same thing, but use a multi-core processor rather than a single-core processor, and have to come up with some minor but theoretically inventive way of handling threading between the processors. The patent doesn't cover B's old system, but when B naturally upgrades to multi-core processing using known techniques at the time, suddenly they're infringing a patent on what they thought was their own product. And because the patent has that minor improvement, B can't knock it out using their records alone. They can still knock it out or get it narrowed, but it turns into a much bigger fight. Of course, if B had gotten a patent on their system originally, then A couldn't do anything, but that's another discussion. It also doesn't apply to patent assertion entities - classic "patent trolls" - because they don't make anything, so B couldn't countersue. Incidentally, this is my first post here. I'm a patent attorney, practicing in communications, video and audio processing, networking, and video-over-IP, among other areas. Before turning to law, I was the assistant chief for a 6 station radio group; was on the exec committee for the Boston chapter of the AES; and did more sound reinforcement than I care to remember. I'm happy to answer any patent law questions, or discuss IP philosophy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dfisk Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 You can patent a new use for stuff that exist... It depends...on a lot of things really. The patent rules say that if you are trying to patent something that is "obvious", even if it is new, it isn't patentable. So, using a wheel as a transport mechanism in a new thing might not be patentable. BUT...and here's the rub...that's what the rules say, but that's not what the patent people always do. I've seen things get patented that had no business getting a patent. The patent office is so overwhelmed that they really don't do their research and for really technical stuff they just don't know what they are looking at. I mean, Apple got a patent for rounded corners on the icons of the iPhone. That is something that already existed and most patent lawyers would tell you is not patentable, but they got it anyway, and then sued samsung over it. I personally have a love/hate relationship with the idea of patents in the way they exist now. It's incredibly expensive to deal with, time consuming, and expensive to enforce your own patent. The patent office seems to hand them out willy nilly and things (like the selfie stick) that shouldn't get patents get them anyway. If you have a great idea you want to patent, but are a small business or an individual with not a lot of capital you'll find it intimidating and cost prohibitive, so some times people just never even pursue their ideas because they can't afford the patent and they don't want to spend time doing R&D on a good product only to have it ripped off by other companies later on. OR, if you have something that isn't patentable (like a bag) you have to accept that other people are going to copy your ideas and deal with it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted September 16, 2015 Author Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 Thank you Dan Rose, and WELCOME! I am so pleased with myself for starting this new Topic thread (and stopping all the nonsense that was happening in the otherwise great Sonosax topic). I know that we have the full range of interests amongst our members regarding these issues, some merely interested in finding out why some company is doing what they are doing, but many may actually want to learn something about patent law and practices --- that's where you come in, Dan, and I truly appreciate your participation here. Thanks to your Dad for suggesting that you might be willing to come on the site and help us understand these things more fully. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rachel Cameron Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 +1, and welcome Dan! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Rose Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 The patent office is so overwhelmed that they really don't do their research and for really technical stuff they just don't know what they are looking at. I mean, Apple got a patent for rounded corners on the icons of the iPhone. That is something that already existed and most patent lawyers would tell you is not patentable, but they got it anyway, and then sued samsung over it. Just to clear up, the "rounded corners" thing referred to a design patent on the iPhone. Apple also had design patents on their icons, but I don't believe they ever sued Samsung over those. They did sue over the grid layout in iOS, but that was another patent. Regardless, things are a little different with design patents. Specifically, individual elements of the design don't have to be new (such as 'rounded corners' or 'silver' or 'wood'), but the overal aesthetic impression, as a whole, needs to be new. Design patents are actually kind of narrow - Apple wasn't claiming every rounded corner, but a device with specific bezel size and dimension ratios, specific radii of curvature on the corners, color, button placement, etc. The quote about rounded corners actually comes from their response to the German court during litigation over the German version of the same patent, where they essentially said "our design is very specific, and there a number of ways that Samsung could change their device and not infringe: they could change the dimensions and make it taller or wider; they could move the button on the front to the side or make it off-center; they could slap a big honking 'Samsung' logo on the front; they could change the rounded corners to square; they could add a wrap-around bezel; etc." Essentially, the patent claimed a combination of features A+B+C+D+E and if any of those was missing, it wouldn't infringe... but the media then jumped on it as "Apple claims to have invented rounded corners." As an aside, Samsung added a wrap-around bezel to their next version, the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, without anything else... it didn't infringe the patent, despite having the exact same rounded corners that people say Apple claimed to own. It's really not the individual elements, but the entire combination - the overall look and feel. As a further aside, during the US litigation, the judge held up the Galaxy Tab and iPad and asked Samsung's lawyers to identify which was which. They couldn't. :/ I personally have a love/hate relationship with the idea of patents in the way they exist now. It's incredibly expensive to deal with, time consuming, and expensive to enforce your own patent. The patent office seems to hand them out willy nilly and things (like the selfie stick) that shouldn't get patents get them anyway. If you have a great idea you want to patent, but are a small business or an individual with not a lot of capital you'll find it intimidating and cost prohibitive, so some times people just never even pursue their ideas because they can't afford the patent and they don't want to spend time doing R&D on a good product only to have it ripped off by other companies later on. OR, if you have something that isn't patentable (like a bag) you have to accept that other people are going to copy your ideas and deal with it. It's true and a difficult situation... You have to file the patent before disclosing the idea in order to protect it, but at that point, you don't have any revenue to justify the expense, so it's a chicken vs. egg thing. But, at least with software-based inventions, the speed of development and reverse engineering means there really isn't a first-to-market advantage anymore that you can rely on for your competitive differentiator: you work for a year or two coming up with your new software, publish it without filing for patents and hoping copyright will protect you enough, and a few weeks later, there's a competitor product out there. You may have been hoping for six months of exclusivity in the market, but you'll be lucky to get six weeks... and the guys with the teams of reverse engineering programmers are also the guys who spend their money on marketing, so if you were relying on word-of-mouth to expand your market, they are going to appear to be the originators and you'll be the guy hopping on the bandwagon. The patent system is a great target to point at as crushing small businesses or individual inventors, but it's really a problem endemic to capitalism as a whole: the reason you can't compete with Apple or Microsoft isn't just the fact that they have patents and you don't. It's also their massive development and manufacturing and marketing and fame and liquid capital and... etc., etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerard-NYNY Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 It's this case and Supreme Court Decision that has led to design infringement lawsuits: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/81/511/ ABA discussion here: http://apps.americanbar.org/intelprop/spring2014/coursematerials/materials/The Rise of Design Protection From Spoons and Carpets to Smartphones and Cars/The Rise of Design Protection Case Summaries.pdf Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Blankenship Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 Dan, It's terrific to have someone here with the expertise and experience to keep us honest -- as many internet "facts" are often tossed about without the depth of understanding to make them actually mean anything. Welcome aboard! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom Duffy Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 The patent system is a great target to point at as crushing small businesses or individual inventors, but it's really a problem endemic to capitalism as a whole: the reason you can't compete with Apple or Microsoft isn't just the fact that they have patents and you don't. It's also their massive development and manufacturing and marketing and fame and liquid capital and... etc., etc. This reminds me of something one of our previous Sales VP said when we were talking about Marketing - "sure, you could splurge and do a TV advert for a product, but you couldn't handle the volume it would generate". The kickstarter campaigns that widely overshoot their targets are an example of this as well. If you were expecting to partially hand-assemble a couple of hundred units and suddenly you have orders for 7000, you're gonna have a bad time. This gulf in scalability is what holds back anyone with a great idea but without substantial financial backing and access to real manufacturing experience. All the investment money right now goes to pure-play internet services, not manufactured goods. Except home automation stuff, that's hot right now - a lot of venture money going down the drain there. Tom Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Patrick Tresch Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 Thanks Dan for joining the discussion. Your posts are very informative. I surely have asked some dumb questions. ;-) Pat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Rose Posted September 16, 2015 Report Share Posted September 16, 2015 This reminds me of something one of our previous Sales VP said when we were talking about Marketing - "sure, you could splurge and do a TV advert for a product, but you couldn't handle the volume it would generate". The kickstarter campaigns that widely overshoot their targets are an example of this as well. If you were expecting to partially hand-assemble a couple of hundred units and suddenly you have orders for 7000, you're gonna have a bad time. This gulf in scalability is what holds back anyone with a great idea but without substantial financial backing and access to real manufacturing experience. Totally - and I've pledged for several of those campaigns that have blown up. They've always delivered, so far at least, but those estimated dates keep sliding as they start adding stretch goals and manufacturing/shipping costs increase. Still, it's a great way for a startup to do pre-orders, as long as no one actually considers them investments. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
soundtrane Posted November 10, 2015 Report Share Posted November 10, 2015 I personally have a love/hate relationship with the idea of patents in the way they exist now. +111 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bralleput Posted November 10, 2015 Report Share Posted November 10, 2015 Jacques Sax : "This is something completely new for me, and I feel that something has been broken in our small world of professional audio. As far as I know, none of the manufacturers who have significantly contributed to the evolution of our domain has blocked the development of an idea/concept/product that would be beneficial for us all, through the use of patents. By breaking this tacit agreement, this company is closing a door on the world of sound and its wave of evolutions, and is rendering the world of audio impoverished." He has a point..It's a small,small world in pro sound mfg's.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jozzafunk Posted November 10, 2015 Report Share Posted November 10, 2015 Thank you for initiating this discussion Jeff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted November 10, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 10, 2015 The only relevant point that was made is that "it's a small, small world in pro sound mfg's". So? The statement "none of the manufacturers who have significantly contributed to the evolution of our domain has blocked the development of an idea/concept/product that would be beneficial for us all, through the use of patents" makes no sense. Do any of us know how many other manufacturers of wireless gear have had their development "blocked" because part of their development was to steal Lectrosonics patented digital hybrid system? Even in our small world, every company is free to try and develop the best most innovative and useful products they can, but this development process cannot involve theft of some other company's patented technology. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted November 10, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 10, 2015 Glen Trew has said: "Whether or not the threat of a law suit was direct, I don't know, but it was clearly implied. I'm not saying it was right or wrong, good or bad; only that it was, in deed, the reason our customers in the US lost an equipment option that could have been a valid choice." The only reason US customers lost an equipment option was that Sonosax decided not to ship to the US, it's just that simple. The reason for the Sonosax decision (and later, the decision to ship a specific US model) is still not totally clear, even though both principle parties have commented, both publicly and privately, in the manner they see as fit. Whether a lawsuit was "implied" or not seems to be mostly a semantic issue. I think any time there is a potential for patent infringement, one could say a lawsuit is implied, somewhere down the road, but merely being implied does not place that implication anywhere within the communications that went on between Zaxcom and Sonosax. Maybe Sonosax thought they were looking straight into a lawsuit because they knew full well that what they were doing was an infringement of Zaxcom's existing patent? Can we ever know if this is the case? Unless both parties wish to continue this discussion in public and be totally honest and truthful in their accounting of these conversations, we will never know the full story. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikewest Posted November 10, 2015 Report Share Posted November 10, 2015 Exactly Sarcanon I developed an add-on board for the Fostex PD-2 dat recorder. It provided switchable monitoring and a better headphone amplifier. My business partner at the time and I sought advice prom a patent lawyer. That cost $1000.00 an we established that to protect the idea would cost $7,000 per country. No go, any way we went ahead and produced 100 kits and sold them round the world. A great experience and learning curve in so many ways! mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glen Trew Posted November 11, 2015 Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 (edited) The only reason US customers lost an equipment option was that Sonosax decided not to ship to the US, it's just that simple... Not that simple at all, Jeff, because it leaves out the reason it was pulled from the US market, which was clearly stated by Jacques. "Implied" is not semantics at all, and can certainly be a threat, as any of the thousands of members on this forum know that the implication of a patent infringement is an expensive lawsuit. That was the implication I was left with, particularly on the heels of the Tascam lawsuit. Again, I'm not saying right or wrong, good or bad; just trying to keep it honest without bias. Edited November 11, 2015 by Glen Trew Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Woodcock Posted November 11, 2015 Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 Glenn Sanders will come in eventually, but in another conversation else where he spoke about his interaction with sonasax, to paraphrase He said he made no threats, asked sonosax to clarify their design also suggested a license agreement if there was a conflict, they made no attempt to do so and next thing is they pulled the product from the us market. There is a paper trail of the conversation but no threat was ever made. Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrismedr Posted November 11, 2015 Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 Glenn Sanders will come in eventually, but in another conversation else where he spoke about his interaction with sonasax, to paraphrase He said he made no threats, asked sonosax to clarify their design also suggested a license agreement if there was a conflict, they made no attempt to do so and next thing is they pulled the product from the us market. There is a paper trail of the conversation but no threat was ever made. well, at this point it becomes a "he said, she said" thing that no outsider can really verify... i don't know neither of the two gentlemen personally, but from the few interview videos i've seen of them i have a strong feeling to believe one of them more then the other ; ) chris Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Woodcock Posted November 11, 2015 Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 As I said I'm not allowed to copy what Glenn said as its a rule from the other group. It was made clear that all the written communications are there to be seen so it can be solved very easily. Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted November 11, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 (edited) Not that simple at all, Jeff, because it leaves out the reason it was pulled from the US market, which was clearly stated by Jacques. "Implied" is not semantics at all, and can certainly be a threat, as any of the thousands of members on this forum know that the implication of a patent infringement is an expensive lawsuit. That was the implication I was left with, particularly on the heels of the Tascam lawsuit. Again, I'm not saying right or wrong, good or bad; just trying to keep it honest without bias. Just because there was a patent dispute between Zaxcom and Tascam in the past, it should not be assumed that the issues were the same as they were between Zaxcom and Sonosax. I know for a fact that Tascam and Zaxcom had many more conversations, papers exchanging hands, discussions with lawyers, than any of these things with Zaxcom and Sonosax. Edited November 11, 2015 by Jeff Wexler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrismedr Posted November 11, 2015 Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 It was made clear that all the written communications are there to be seen so it can be solved very easily. maybe, but it's pretty unlikely that we're going to see this conversation (and probably rightly so) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Erkal Taskin Posted November 11, 2015 Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 Just because there was a patent dispute between Zaxcom and Tascam in the past, it should not be assumed that the issues were the same as they were between Zaxcom and Sonosax. I know for a fact that Tascam and Zaxcom had many more conversations, papers exchanging hands, discussions with lawyers, than any of these things with Zaxcom and Sonosax. Do you think Audio Ltd. will soon be on that list as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Thomas Posted November 11, 2015 Report Share Posted November 11, 2015 Do you think Audio Ltd. will soon be on that list as well? It looks like they've taken the approach that they know the patent is valid only in the US, so have also made a version with limited functionality for the US market Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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