Jason's "hoverboard," and patents thereof
GordonMcComb
Posts: 3,366
in Robotics
Out of this winters' CES there's news that the feds raided one of the booths and confiscated products and material related to a Chinese knockoff of the OneWheel balancing hoverboard. The articles talk about the original having a couple of patents, and I remember our own Jason Dorie demonstrated such a ride earlier last year. So I looked up the patents in question:
The first is a design patent. Nothing really special there.
The second is this one:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=9,101,817.PN.&OS=PN/9,101,817&RS=PN/9,101,817
and I was interested to see that the patent appears to go out of its way to limit the invention to a single wheel. I recall Jason's balancing skateboard used two wheels.
Frankly, I have a hard time imagining how this got a patent to begin with. One wheel or ten, it's not a novel concept, and trades on well-established research using accelerometers and other sensors to create a self-balancing machine. I realize the single wheel is clever, but is it novel, and is it really non-obvious? No one's ever heard of a unicycle?
Now, I fully realize there must have been a lot of effort made to getting everything to work. The math alone must have been tremendous. But patents were invented to reward truly original and novel ideas, not merely protect someone's investment in time.
Or maybe there's something else in the patent that's truly unique and non-obvious to those in the field that I'm overlooking.
The first is a design patent. Nothing really special there.
The second is this one:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PTXT&s1=9,101,817.PN.&OS=PN/9,101,817&RS=PN/9,101,817
and I was interested to see that the patent appears to go out of its way to limit the invention to a single wheel. I recall Jason's balancing skateboard used two wheels.
Frankly, I have a hard time imagining how this got a patent to begin with. One wheel or ten, it's not a novel concept, and trades on well-established research using accelerometers and other sensors to create a self-balancing machine. I realize the single wheel is clever, but is it novel, and is it really non-obvious? No one's ever heard of a unicycle?
Now, I fully realize there must have been a lot of effort made to getting everything to work. The math alone must have been tremendous. But patents were invented to reward truly original and novel ideas, not merely protect someone's investment in time.
Or maybe there's something else in the patent that's truly unique and non-obvious to those in the field that I'm overlooking.
Comments
Recently, Ars Technical did a piece on the Microsoft view slider, and it's obvious tech all the way. The protection is look and feel, meaning others can do the same thing, but must place it elsewhere in the application and should differentiate it's presentation or graphical device components somehow.
This patent seems like a similar thing. Others may do a one wheel transport, but must differ in design.
My first thoughts anyway...
Design patents are separate, always with a D in the patent number. Serialized patents numbers like the one I linked are the standard fare, for a process or method.
Jason, I imagine you're right about the Segway patents, and the one I looked at is limited to two coaxial wheels, but also claims a "uniball" for a single wheel. The main claim in this patent is also as a vehicle to carry a user. I think that's the defining point, and differentiates itself from any claims of robotic systems that might have demonstrated the concept.
Somewhere on the YouTubes is a video of a guy riding around his laboratory on a similar thing. Sadly I can't find it now.
People have been doing this kind of things for ages.
Patents are basically stupid. Have been the cause of great expense and an inhibitor of progress for the common since James Watt and the steam engine.
If I recall correctly the proceedings didn't invalidate the troll's patent because we weren't using some portion of it that was considered the critical bit. So once that was proven the lawsuit was dropped and the patent wasn't invalidated as prior art. So they were free to sue other companies afterwards.
However, after that I've never viewed email as private, and anything you send could come back to haunt you.
Don't see how it could, seeing how the Segway patent is from 10 years *earlier* (filed 1999, issued 2001). Or another way of looking at it, the Segway patent expires in about three years. It's older than most people think.
Still, the way patents are written, what gets protected are often the wrong things. The Segway patent is for a two-wheeled vehicle that a (human) user can ride on. That's really obvious, but what's not obvious was how to get the control math to work for all the various heights and weights of riders. From what I understand, the algorithm for that is a trade secret, and was not disclosed in the patent.
Depending on where this case came up for trial, there's increasing case law where defendants in a baseless patent suit have been able to demand repayment of legal fees, should the plaintiff lose (example: Nintendo). Plus, with the anti-troll regulations basically dead (for now), there are a few law firms popping up that will mount a counter-suit against a losing plaintiff on contingency -- their take is hefty, but they take nearly all of the risk. Of course, few patent cases ever get to trial, which is what the trolls are counting on.
Tolling could be dramatically reduced if the plaintiff could only bring the suit in the federal district the defendant is located in (or US District Court for DC in the case of alleged infringement from a non-US entity). This would help cancel out the egregious shopping of many such cases to courts in East Texas which has been shown to heavily favor patent owners.