I guess you accidentally stumbled upon this topic and thought: let’s set these people straight. You have quite some knowledge of the law, and considered it to be your civic duty to bring us the thruth, free of charge.
Because you are a totally unbiased bystander, are you not? That’s not the impression I got when you split the human race up in two groups. A small group of hard working people just trying to make an honest living. And the other group who are badmouthing the first group just because they were used to buy certain things for half the current price. On the website of the first, overflowing with legal warnings, we see that “trying to make an honest living” more or less means doubling the price of the original manufacturer. Does adding 2 pieces of AMC7135 really have to set us back $10?
IMHO your client has (apparently) the letter of the law on his side, but that does not mean that those who don’t agree and feel cheated upon all are illegal, arrogant, self-centered and immoral. I say client, because who els would describe the group who pays his cheques as hard working people (repeat, repeat), while the other group is only described in very negative terms.
@Mister Admin: aren’t there rules regarding shills?
Those are pretty bold claims to make without citing a statute. Contending that I’m breaking the law if I choose what business to patronize with out an “allowed purpose” really destroys your credibility with me.
Wood's glass - Wikipedia wiki on woods glass. Transformation = cyco babble, psychobabble etc. Nothing is being transformed in that patent. Well, maybe reality. Or let me put this another way. The filter lens applied to UV flashlights is not transforming wavelengths so the patent does not apply.
I’m not going to attempt to argue the issue as a lawyer. I’m not a lawyer, and people who are lawyers are arguing it in court. I can, however approach it as a flashlight expert, as can many others on this forum.
What is it then? The Engenious Designs products look to be ordinary flashlights with off the shelf UV LEDs and off the shelf ZWB2 or ZWB3 filters. WTC did not invent the ZWB series of filters.
I’m mostly just disappointed that I didn’t think of patenting red, green or blue filters when white LEDs first came out. We either need less abuse of the patent system or a way for me to participate more in the abuse of it.
The way too cool patent should never have been granted, any more than one on red green or blue filters on a white LED flashlight. Since it was granted though, our choices are to fight to have it nullified, flaunt it, or wait for it to expire.
As far as I know there is no legal ramifications for making a patented item for your own use, so why can’t people just build them for themselves? They’re all off the shelf parts right?
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Without quoting, some immediate comments…denying the law, so to speak…are incorrect. What Mark stated is generally correct, with standard howevers that will be hashed out (and as always, what the law might be is not necessarily what gets introduced or argued in the particular case). If I were to go out on a limb I’d say Engenious will get their ass handed to them and if they want to rebut the novelty or validity of the patent they’ll have to do that later in their own new case (however it’s possible to have some of it decided by this judge right now, for better or worse, especially if they do a claim construction hearing at some point and the judge concludes that “filter” and “transform” are the same thing…that could happen). It’s also possible that a review or reexamination could commence (the latter of which would take several years) if the parties agree on certain stipulations beforehand, one of which would be estoppel and would effectively end the present case.
Basically, respect the law and don’t “reject” things based on emotion and opinion, especially if that opinion is not an educated one in such a complex (doubly-complex, here) area. I’m not saying that with the edge that was used above, just solid advice. Our society is generally set up such that if you disagree with a law, you work to address that while still obeying it until it is changed. Apparently that did not happen here, in a couple different ways.
Also apparently, BOTH sides may have counsel that is not best suited to represent their respective parties in this matter. Looking at this case and also at several previous cases…all I can say is that some folks may be admitted in the federal districts but don’t know the ropes, and the judges in this one have probably all scratched their heads at the many missteps and errors in these proceedings, right off the bat even. All that does is cause extended delays and rack up the billable hours and money lost.
I didn’t do a lot of digging but if it’s possible to invalidate the patent based on legitimate and non-exempted “prior art” then that might be the best approach, but that will be a $$$ road to go down. And prior art encompasses a lot of things that one might not expect (and can either support or nullify a patent application/claim). There are complications when foreign/global issues are involved as well, and again, that can go either way. Complex, not an area of law to guess or opinionate about, and not for attorneys that may be tackling it without substantial experience and/or mentoring. My friendly two cents. It’d be nice if this weren’t an issue, but it is, and it’s sad that it’s come to the courts for resolution. As end users/consumers most of us probably don’t like it (I don’t), but that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong or incorrect, unless that shakes out in the end to be so based on previous errors.
I have to take back my statement about building the light for personal use. On further research I discovered that it is technically illegal to build a patented object for personal use, though you would most likely never be prosecuted as it wouldn’t be worth it to the patent holder.
I didn’t realize the lawsuit in question was not to nullify the patent, just to fight being sued by the patent holder. It seems to me the money would be better spent trying to nullify the patent.
Personally I’ll just wait a few more years for it to expire.
My information could be old, but I’m pretty sure patent infringement is a civil liability, not a criminal one. So, you could be sued, but not prosecuted, as I understand it.
If you make one UV light for your own personal use, the likelihood of getting sued is minimal, since it probably just isn’t worth it to the patent holder.
However, since you know about this patent, the patent holder could likely get you for willful infringement
I still don’t have enough money to make it worthwhile for anybody to try to win a patent infringement suit against me, but nuisance suits are, well, annoying.
As a programmer, I’ve been told by several reliable sources to NEVER search the patent database. If there’s any chance I run across a patent, then my company gets sued for infringing, that search history can be used to backup willful infringement claims. In the 1990’s, that could mean triple the damages.
Patents are publicly available information, and if they reveal enough details such that you could build one for personal use, then go for it. Who would ever know what you did on your own and in your own house?
And by definition, infringement includes the selling or offering to sell the product; if you aren’t selling or offering to sell, then it is not infringement:
For business purposes, it seems that you might want to build, test and evaluate a device to determine if it meets your requirements and would be suitable, before you pay royalties for the privilege to manufacture and sell, right?
Plus you would want to know that it actually works as expected. Then if you intend to sell the product, you had better get a license.
Over the years i’ve investigated dozens of useless motor/generator patents.
One guy from Vegas told me he paid $15k in attorney fees to get a patent on an energy-saving device. He replaced the piston of a 2-stroke weed-eater motor with an electric solenoid. Sure it caused the crankshaft to rotate, but it was too slow to eat any weeds; a big useless clacker with no purpose or function and sure didn’t save any energy.
A guy in Florida patented a 3-phase transformer with complicated windings that could negate back-emf using some magnets; the patent didn’t directly claim over-unity, but had some weasel wording in there to imply that it could, and on his website he makes claims of free energy using his “patented” device.
A guy from Tennessee patented a generator that his “grandpappy” invented and revealed to him. He couldn’t claim perpetual motion in the patent, but he told me it would once it got going. It was a 16’ diameter crankshaft with 12 crank arms; each crank arm had an electric motor, 8’ long ball screw and 50 lb weight. The motors were synched up to extend or retract the weight to cause the crankshaft to rotate using “free” energy from the force of gravity when the weight was extended vs retracted. The center axle of the device was connected to a car alternator to produce 100 Amps of 12V power; this could be used to feed back into the 12 motors to drive the crank. He seriously believed in this thang cause his grandpappy told him it would work… :laughing:
Appreciate your objective level headed discussion Correllux. And you made some good points. Miss-steps clearly took place.
The only reason I even responded to Zac’s post was it was only advocating one position, and this has been true across multiple internet forums. And, most controlled forums won’t allow any objective discussion in the groups. It would have been much better if Cole, Petterson, et al had not tried to make this a public issue and try to unreasonably illegally (yes - question for the court) destroy businesses.
Anyway, at least in this forum I could weigh-in with some facts and links to such. And, to be clear, I am not a shill, nor employed by anybody in the case. I do believe in a nation of laws, I am professionally educated and had more than one professional career.
That’s not the impression I got when you split the human race up in two groups. A small group of hard working people just trying to make an honest living. And the other group who are badmouthing the first group just because they were used to buy certain things for half the current price. On the website of the first, overflowing with legal warnings, we see that “trying to make an honest living” more or less means doubling the price of the original manufacturer. Does adding 2 pieces of AMC7135 really have to set us back $10?