Regular occurrence, short lived. You won’t be able to see anything on Pacer anyway unless you register and pay. There are some sites that may make the docket available for free viewing and sometimes some of the filed pleadings (justia and law360 maybe but there are others with a better chance….googling case/district will bring those sites up if they’ve listed it).
Found the court filing here:
The patent claim number 1 is for a portable battery powered LED flashlight that creates a UV beam with one or more “wavelength transforming materials” over the lens.
I’ll do my best to keep y’all updated. This issue is currently being discussed on three platforms: Facebook in the Fluorescent Mineral Group (full text of the lawsuit is posted there), on reddit/r/flashlight, and here. I have a blog post about it on Naturesrainbows - https://www.naturesrainbows.com/post/save-our-hobby-donate-now
I have been intimately involved since day 1 on all topics here. The patent was originally filed to cover sheets of phosphor inserted over a UVC fluorescent light. The phosphor sheets would transform the 254nm wavelength to 312nm or 365nm. He subsequently got a patent for the same thing covering UV LEDs. Only later did he realize that the market for plain jane UVA lights would be big, without using the phosphor sheets to transform wavelengths. He got some twisted wording in the patent that allows him to make his current claims, IMHO without merit. His claim is that the filters get hot and emit IR - thus wave transformation.
But that technical argument is how patent lawyers earn the big $$$. I think it is much simpler. All boils down to prior art. The challenge is proving it. In this case we have a patent, dated long before his, which describes the use of bandpass filters with LED flashlights, clearly establishing the prior art which we in the mineral hobby have known for decades.
We’ll see I guess. Good news is that a bunch of people are backing us (https://gogetfunding.com/uvunited/#) and we can finally get this tested in the courts. #UVUnited
The “technical argument” is just part of the process, depends greatly on the matter in question. The big bucks - well the entire process is quite expensive, all around - happens when the patent examiner issues challenges, so to speak, to which the applicant must respond before anything proceeds. That can happen zero, once, or a dozen times in the process and it’s not uncommon for it to take several years for an application to be awarded, and then you have to actually get the patent itself. Really need an attorney to do all of that (or rather, it’s stupid not to).
Prior art may or may not matter. Very complicated area and like much of patent law it’s clear as mud sometimes.
Y’know what I would love to see? For the suppliers of WTCs hosts to just quit selling to him. I suppose the way things are that some other seller or manufacturer would step in to make a buck, but it’d be great if they just flipped him the financial bird. I still don’t think he qualifies as a patent troll, but this patent is one of those shady things to do. I’ve seen some other examples - actually worse - and the end result was that entire communities of hobbyists basically got shafted, and in one of those the patent holder never made any money or tried to make any money with it anyway. Stupid. But those patents stood firm…unpleasant but solid reasons. This is where the concepts of IP law end up falling short of the original intent of the system.
Looking forward to the third and subsequent pleadings of substance. The initial filing and first response are just boilerplate stuff.
What really is a wavelength-transformation material? i understand about the photoelectric effect of UV on metals, but what is the physics of WT, or is there any? How does it compare with just a filter that blocks certain wavelengths?
The patent presents no mathematical theory, no physical theory, no examples, basically nothing other than this guys made-up theory that he can transform UV from one wavelength to another…?
Interesting rock photos at Engenious,
That’s definitely important advice for people involved in the suit. I’m not, but for my part, I’ll clarify what I mean by “patent troll”. Some use that term strictly for non-practicing entities, which WTC clearly isn’t (they sell UV flashlights with filters), while others use it less precisely, to refer to anyone they believe is misusing the patent system. I used it in the latter sense, though maybe I should say “patent bully” or “patent abuser” next time so there can be no confusion.
I’ve been pitchfork riled up about this since I first heard of it. I’ll explain in purely colloquial, common-sense terms why. The technicalities of patent law may differ from my interpretation, but I think anyone who exploits those technicalities in an offensive manner as WTC is doing is a jerk, and jerks deserve to be fed (metaphorically) to lawyers.
- Sticking a visible light filter on a UV light that emits too much visible light is obvious to anyone who knows such filters exist. It was obvious to Gardner just as it would have been to Robert Williams Wood had someone shown him a UV flashlight in 1903 after his invention of Wood’s glass.
- Using a wavelength-transforming phosphor on a UV light source, assuming such a phosphor already existed would also be obvious. That’s how fluorescent lights make white light, and both remote and on-chip phosphors over blue LEDs have been used to emit white light before the patent was filed.
- The facts that the light is powered by a battery or the light source is a UV LED are irrelevant to the obviousness of putting a filter over it to remove unwanted purple.
- The patent describes a variable filter, which have been commonly used for CMY mixing in entertainment lighting for decades. Using a gradient of material that passes UV instead of cyan, or even a variable concentration of quantum dots that fluoresce to produce a variable filter is also obvious.
- The language of the patent is deliberately confusing. I’m neither a lawyer nor any other kind of expert on patents, but I’ve read a few. None have been nearly as hard to understand as this one.
Just copying from my above post to make sure I explain it better: The patent was originally filed to cover sheets of phosphor inserted over a UVC fluorescent light. The phosphor sheets would transform the 254nm wavelength to 312nm or 365nm. He subsequently got a patent for the same thing covering UV LEDs. Only later did he realize that the market for plain jane UVA lights would be big, without using the phosphor sheets to transform wavelengths. He got some twisted wording in the patent that allows him to make his current claims, IMHO without merit. His claim is that the filters get hot and emit IR – thus wave transformation.
A UVC fluorescent bulb has no phosphors inside. The bulb is clear and you see the mercury vapor that excites the phosphors on the white bulbs you are probably familiar with. The bulb is made of quartz so it passes the 254nm UVC. The patent refers to a phosphor sheet (teflon impregnated with phosphor powder) that is placed over the UVC bulb. The phosphor “glows” at a different wavelength (312nm MW UVB for example if that type phosphor is used) - this is the wave transformation.
In the photo of the rocks above you see a piece of tugtupite from Greenland. It has the unique property of responding to different wavelengths of UV light with different colors - red 254nm SW, pinkish 312nm MW, and salmon @ 365nm LW.
On reading realized I’m still not clear. Basics: all fluorescent bulbs work the same inside - mercury vapor with a peak of 254nm (UVC). In your typical fl bulb the inside is coated with a white phosphor. This phosphor glows in reaction to the UVC. The “color” it glows depends on how it is made. There are cool white phosphors, yellow phosphors, green, etc. There are also phosphors which glow in the UV range - 365nm UVA and 312nm UVB (and lots more in between). A bulb coated with a UV phosphor is usually made from UV transparent glass or quartz. THus the UV get out.
From this you can see that you can take a bulb which is not coated with any phosphors and illuminate a phosphor sheet outside the bulb. This sheet “transforms” the wavelength of the bulb.
Story the same for UV LEDs.
But a bandpass filter does not transform the wavelength, it just blocks visible light. His argument is that the filter gets hot, thus emitting IR - a “transformed” wavelength. Completely useless, silly, and obvious - in fact, unwanted. All glass in front of an LED does that.
Hope this helps….
I’m gonna go give you some reddit gold!!! Great analysis!
Hi Mark,
This really stinks that you and everyone affected on your side of the issue/lawsuit has to deal with this.
Like everyone else, I know virtually nothing about patent law, so I'm curious, when WTC filed for their patent, were you made aware and/or given an opportunity to contest the patent filing?
No, I have no idea how anyone would contest a patent, don’t know much about them. Just common sense and what I google ;-).
You don’t but if you have interest as a holder of another patent or related material then that will (should) come up in the search done before application. That’s another thing that should be done by an experienced attorney (or an IP firm at least) and can take months to do thoroughly. If something somehow slips through and you notice it later then you go through USPTO and work it that way. Someone who has no real standing…not sure how that might (or not) work but that’s all through USPTO, not the courts.
Bottom line will probably end up being that defendant was in violation, and if (as it appears) they did so knowingly and continued to do so knowingly, then they’ll get the hammer as those in previous cases did. The law may not be right or may not seem right, but as long as it’s the law then you need to follow it and work other ways for change. Basically the way our whole civil society is set up and supposed to work. The bad thing here is that it’s one of those cases where punitive costs are exponential if it’s proven that the act(s) were willful. Ignoring a demand letter or worse…that’s enough to make you end up paying 3-5 times more than what you might have initially. Ultimate responsibility is to research first, adapt to issues that come up (such as being made aware of a law/restriction)…….etc. As a business owner, manufacturer, producer….you fail at those things and you end up paying dearly unless someone chooses to be extra kind to you.
I do hope that if there’s something of merit that the examiner’s opinion and award can be challenged later in USPTO. One of the things that makes this a little extra difficult is the type of science/physics involved. Mistakes or misunderstandings can be made by the office, by the applicants, and even in past awards/literature/data that may erroneously form a base. Even complex mechanisms or parts of larger mechanical works are much easier to address, and for the most part so are all of the electronics involved these days. I’ll have to go back and sift through his stuff again but I’ve been under the impression that his award was based on something other than the mechanics everyone is focused on.
It sure would be nice for the free and creative flashlight market to be that way again totally. Just one more example of some bad apple squelching people for its own benefit and not really contributing anything to the tree…pretty much the same exact thing as I’ve seen before elsewhere and I was a little sad when I first learned of it and started reading the backstory and then docs in his other suits. Sometimes these kinds of guys get too much of a sense of pride to do the right thing, even if they don’t deserve what they think they have.
It appears to me that “Wavelength-Transformation” is a patent-obscuration term for what everyone else calls “Fluorescence”, in which a photon is emitted after an excited electron drops back down to the ground state energy level.
The wavelength of the emitted photon is always longer than that of the photon which caused the excitation (energy is always lost in the round-trip process). So why make up new terms like WT…
see the fluorescence wiki here: Fluorescence - Wikipedia
Typically fluorescence produces visible colored light but in this case he claims to be able to operate within the UV bands to produce non-visible UV fluorescence from UVC to UVB or UVA.
How could anyone distinguish between an optical filter that simply blocks or transmits certain frequencies versus his WT material?
How would a person test or prove that WT is the mechanism that has actually occurred?
Donate it to the fundraiser instead!
+1, buying reddit gold is just throwing money down the drain.
I have unlimited reddit gold. Don’t ask me how 
Plus, it supports a company I like
The wavelength of the emitted photon is always longer than that of the photon which caused the excitation (energy is always lost in the round-trip process). So why make up new terms like WT…
Yep - stokes law. In this case he’s using the property to “transform” UVC to UVB/UVA via phosphors. It is simple fluorescence, but wave transformation sounds so much cooler to him.
He doesn’t distinguish between a bandpass optical filter and a WT filter. Says they are the same because a bandpass filter gets hot and emits IR. While true, so does an ordinary glass lens. So ALL flashlights are violating his patent according to his analysis. Silly……
Test? all kinds of tests can be selectively made to detect IR, none valid IMHO
That’s just blackbody radiation.
Update? I see that your MTD was granted w/o prejudice. Is he going to refile with a more proper petition/complaint? Seems like such a waste of time and money for both sides thus far…as law often goes.
He refiled the same day. His lawyers were ready so they obviously knew the lawsuit would be dismissed. This third lawsuit also has a good chance of being dismissed as all he did was flesh it out with more BS, kinda like we did in high school to make our term papers the proper length (at least I did…). The defendants haven’t been served yet for the new lawsuit.
Updates are given on the funding page: https://gogetfunding.com/uvunited/
If this helps anything, the filter getting hot is not fluorescing, fluorescence has emission peaks defined by the molecular properties, IR being emitted is just blackbody radiation that is not the result of fluorescence but merely atoms/ molecules vibrating and its spectrum will be way broader, defined only by the (filter’s) temperature, not its material properties.
That said, maybe that’s why they call it wavelength transformation and not fluorescence.
Screw the patent system, it’s broken, toss it. Open source everything and compete in actual improvements to products and concepts. Today’s patents just seek to create stagnant monopolies and hinder progress.