Feds Raid Hoverboard Booth at CES | Hacker News Reader

Feds Raid Hoverboard Booth at CES

bloomberg.com

118 pointsted0113 comments

So a Chinese company knocks off an American company's patented product, ignores the patent holder's correspondence to cease production of the product, then gets their booth shut down forcibly by federal agents who were notified by the patent holder.

The headline makes it seem like some grave injustice occurred (and the headline definitely made me open the link in my timeline) but it seems like the patent holder is simply exercising their legal rights here.

Really? The headline (currently) reads U.S. Marshals (or Feds) Raid Hoverboard Booth at CES. I don't see any reference to injustice—I generally associate raids with positive busts, which is what makes stuff like raiding the Pirate Bay (albeit different feds) so shocking.

I don't associate raids with anything positive necessarily. Sometimes, but not often.

Not necessarily, no, but it's hardly a negative necessarily either. It's just an event.

Raids that make the news they tend to skew heavily negative. All the normal boring successful raids that happen never make the front page of national news sites.

I associate raids with grenades in toddler's cribs, but I'm glad there are people less jaded than me.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/family-toddler-injured-swat-grenade...

Don't really agree. I feel pretty safe in saying there's a general negative connotation when the words "Feds" and "raid" are present in the same sentence. It may be true that the words themselves don't necessarily mean anything negative, but I bet most people would agree that the tone of the words is negative sounding.

I think the words default to having a negative emotional valence of the object of the sentence is a person, but a positive valence if the object is a company.

Feds raid widow's apartment → obviously bad

Feds raid Exxon offices → obviously good

...which is kind of fascinating for what it implies. It seems to me, personally, that raids against companies are almost always well-researched before being executed, to the point of basically never being even slightly ethically ambiguous. Whereas raids against individuals seem to be almost always ethically ambiguous, and often entirely inexplicable.

Then again, the "Feds" in those two cases are two different groups: it's mostly the SEC that raids companies, while it's mostly the DEA that raids individuals. This might explain a lot of the difference in attitude.

Ill offer the NZ police/FBI/Hollywood raid on Dotcom up as a counter example. Numerous laws violated which even a basic summary for facts would have caught. Then again, the Feds got what they wanted while the suckers and idiots down here were left to sort out their mess.

Maybe you have become inured.

But when you get officers removing stuff, you'd better have some solid case. According to the article "By 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Onewheel filed a request with a judge to stop the Trotters from being displayed on the show floor."

So how much time was put into making sure there is a solid case?

(Legal rights are always relative)

Saying that the Chinese company is producing a knockoff has yet to be proved. Given the hoverboard craze I am not surprised if the Chinese company has produced something by coincidence that the US company _happens_ to have a patent on.

Try and read the article before making abstract comments. It has names and links and it's bloody obvious Chinese is a blantant rip, not a "coincidence."

How do you know who ripped of whom?

The abstract comment is saying that the Chinese company ripped off this particular guy w/o better evidence because it's a Chinese company. When in fact this design has appeared before the US guy "invented" it. I read the article but nothing seemed bloody obvious in terms of a smoking gun.

> The headline makes it seem like some grave injustice occurred

Because you expect most news about US cops to report abusive behaviors. Whether the problem is with you, with US cops or with news can be debated, but that's clearly the sign of some problem(s).

(Just to be clear, I personally don't think you're one of the problems)

Who is stealing from whom?

Future Motion applied for their patent on July 21, 2015 and the application was published and publicly viewable on Nov. 12, 2015.

http://www.freshpatents.com/-dt20151112ptan20150323935.php

Changzhou First International Trade Co was established in 2011. I wasn't able to tell when they first started selling these scooters.

Were they really able to clone a product and get it in stores and demoed at CES between Nov. 12 2015 and today? Amazingly agile if so.

And not even addressing the issue that all these products really seem to be violating Dean Kamen's patents.

NPR's Planet Money podcast released an episode a few weeks ago where they tried to find the original inventor:

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/11/27/457404184/episo...

This is a different kind of hoverboard. One single wheel in the middle, ridden sideways, not wheels on each end ridden forward.

It takes a long time to get a patent from application to publication.

If you look closer at the patent, what will be considered the priority date for that patent is the date the provisional patent application was filed -- May 6, 2013.

I agree, however the first date Changzhou could have seen the patent application was its actual date of publication.

I am skeptical Changzhou could have gone from reading this application, which is about ideas and not specific implementation and design, to engineering a manifestation of that patent, setting up a production line, testing, marketing, boxing, and selling these products between November and January.

I would say that Changzhou has obviously been working on a similar design in parallel. When they started is not clear though.

Both are also clearly derivative from, and in violation of, Kamen's patents.

There's already several products from other companies that are one wheeled unicycle kamen devices. The hoverboards are mini Segways without the needed handle for stabilization. The more sensible front to back skateboard concept has been discussed in various places. It's not unreasonable to expect that many people were working on the design in parallel.

The facts are though that the Chinese company failed to secure a US patent. That is their downfall in the US market.

To say they stole the design is premature.

An alternative narrative is that One Wheel are manufacturing in China - or purchasing multiple components from Chinese factories - and their plans were leaked to another factory owner. This is relatively common.

In this scenario the Changzhou company is able to start manufacturing soon after One Wheel starts manufacturing.

It's even more common in China that people that work on products especially manufacture design engineers simply walk down the street with an existing design they worked on and start their own company. Just look at the ecig business Chinese knockoffs of "western" brand designs that are manufactured in China are available before the real product even hits the market.

Sometimes the factories that are making the legitimate product run an off the books "Second shift" to make totally identical knock offs.

I've seen knock offs from china that are so identical they even copied the patent marking my client had molded into all their products. The knock off actually had my clients patent stamped into their product.

Is it required that they steal the design and idea from the patent documents, and not from the actual product, which almost certainly came out before the patent docs?

No. Stealing and patent infringement are separate issues. Stealing might be something like walking away with design drawings, source code, etc. This could happen at any time, including before the patent application is filed. Infringement means using the ideas claimed by the patent document.

Among the many possibilities, one is that the Chinese company sincerely believes that the US patent application is invalid, for instance if they think that they have discovered prior art. Also, if and when the US patent issues, its claims may bear little resemblance to the application, for instance if the Patent Office discovers prior art.

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but I have a handful of patents.

This company filed a provisional patent long before they contacted their first manufacturer. It's a pretty common (and some may say racist) claim to assume chinese company can't invent anything, and that white company never steals anything. But evidence showing either of these claims is lacking. Do you have such evidence? Does anyone?

I was simply using the term "Chinese" and "US" to identify the two parties by their country of origin. And I was just describing what I understand about patents.

And I should add as a note: It's only infringement if the patent is valid, something that hasn't been established yet AFAIK.

The onewheel design using a hub motor on a large wheel is quite distinctive and novel.

The patent publication date also has nothing to do with when Changzhou may have begun development -- OneWheel launched at CES 2014, 2 years ago getting A LOT of media coverage as well as a million dollar crowdfund campaign. That makes it rather attractive to knock off. The start date on Changzhou's development was anytime after January 2014.

You copy the product in the market, not necessarily the patent itself. It is at your peril to copy so directly and ignore "Patent Pending".

It would not take more than 3-6 months for a company like this to have a knock off to show.

I have not looked at Kamen's patents, but it would be hard to imagine the OneWheel displacing a Segway's use case. Of course if Kamen's patents well cover the core "self-balancing" technology he could push to get royalties. It would be a waste of money for Kamen to completely shutdown a skateboard though.

The OneWheel launched before the hoverboards started showing up. The timeline may even place hoverboards as less blatant derivatives of OneWheel.

> The onewheel design using a hub motor on a large wheel is quite distinctive and novel.

Or not so much... The Chinese have long used wheelbarrows that featured a centre-position wheel[1]. Adding a motor to that doesn't seem like a big leap of innovation to me.

[1] http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/the-chinese-wheelbarr...

Using Wayback Machine at least on their website nothing was listed as of August 2015. [1]

[1] http://wayback.co/www.cztrotter.com

Once they get the patent, that is no longer the issue. If you think the Chinese company had the product and was selling it in the US before Future Motion even applied for their patent, then that is the fault of the US Patent Office for granting the patent in the first place, not the fault of Future Motion.

If there is an issue, it is with the USPTO, not with the actions of the federal marshals as tipped off by Future Motion.

And if you look at the website posted by soheil, is is obvious that ripping off other people's inventions is this company's bread and butter.

I have yet to see a Chinese company that isn't on the wrong side of patent/copyright infringement. They don't seem to understand patents at all.

Chinese companies understand Patents are a nice blue print to make their own products and sell them in places the patent holder self never heard of and right in the patent holders backyard... all the hoverboards that are exploding are knock offs

> all the hoverboards that are exploding are knock offs

Which are the original ones for this most popular design?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL58ZSeXz-s

The onewheel has been for sale for about a year now. Not sure when they shipped their first board but I got my first onewheel in August 2015.

Thanks for that datapoint which shows that a customer received a working chinese onewheel board before the american company's patent application was even first published, and long before that american company had a working product based on those principles for sale.

Onewheel is Future Motion's product, not the Chinese company. The kickstarter was in Jan 2014 so that's how long a copycat would have had.

> Were they really able to clone a product and get it in stores and demoed at CES between Nov. 12 2015 and today? Amazingly agile if so.

Actually, Future Motion showed the product at CES last year... so Changzhou First would have had a year to develop it.

For those who wanna see the products side by side:

Onewheel (American) [1]

Totter (Chinese) [2]

[1] http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/gadgetlab/2014/01/1W2_1021...

[2] http://g02.s.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1LWviKFXXXXc3XXXXq6xXFXXXU/Ele...

If anything, based on these photos the Chinese "knockoff" looks more refined. The Onewheel device pictured in your first link looks like a prototype or at best, a first revision.

Then again, maybe they are going for that retro-custom-modded-skateboard look?

The knock-off looks cheaper and more likely to be made of shitty plastic. To my eyes.

It probably is cheaper, being a knockoff. My point was more that the Onewheel device looks like something I'd slap together in my workshop out of spare metal brackets and plywood, not something I'd bring to mass market.

All that said, I wouldn't ride either one. At my age bones don't heal as fast as they used to.

Also more dangerous because of the plastic where feet would be placed. That plastic should not be added for safety reason.

I was hoping they were being raided for gross abuse of the term "hoverboard," but alas, that isn't the case.

In a perfect world.

The largest surprise to me here is that a small startup could get the judicial system to act in a matter of days to order the execution of a raid! That is impressive.

Feds don't mind popping their heads on the evening news every once in a while. What better venue than CES?

Here's a very similar design created by Jamison Go and his team at Georgia Tech back in 2011: http://thevariableconstant.blogspot.com/2011/02/survey-self-...

yeah but that has 2 wheels. ours only has one. definitely worthy of a new patent. /s

IMHO everyone should be getting raided by the feds. Segway's patent from 2001 covers their 'inventions' handily.

[1] http://www.google.com/patents/US6302230

Came here to say basically this. It's not a new invention just because the number of wheels changed.

Confused. The stability control system depends utterly on the number and arrangement of wheels. Such a change obviously constitutes a new invention.

Android and iOS are both smartphones, despite completely different software. The invention is the hardware.

the implied analogy doesn't really seem applicable here. What are you trying to say?

From the linked "Segway" Patent:

FIG. 12 shows an alternate embodiment of a balancing vehicle with a single wheel central to the support platform of the vehicle and no handle in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention;

Take a look at figure 12: http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/US6302230B1/US063...

The patent covers pretty much every conceivable self-balancing device you can think of. They covered their bases with the patent, and I was shocked that all the current 'hoverboard' designs didn't get immediately sued to oblivion.

The funny thing is that Ninebot (the company that bought Segway) has been making single-wheeled devices since at least 2014. They're quite a bit nicer than either of the devices mentioned in this article and can be had for $800-900.

I only know because I did some halfassed window shopping for them before deciding that however fun they looked, I wouldn't really be able to ride one anywhere in town legally so it would end up being a pretty expensive toy to ride around the park with.

(current example: http://www.ninebot.com/ninebot/NinebotOne/)

Only if Segway cares to exercise their patent.

Apparently they are mounting a case against hoverboards... stay tuned.

I used to work with the guy who made this hoverboard (the US company, not the Chinese one). He's an incredibly talented engineer, I'm glad he's able to fight crappy competitors that are hurting the hoverboard industry.

Right, now can we employ the same strategy to have GPL-violating products pulled from the shelves?

Seriously. Perhaps this is an avenue to pursue in the case of unrepentant GPL violation by manufacturers - render their final products unsellable.

> Lynzey Donahue, a U.S. Marshals official, said marshals served a court order at CES.

If there's a court order, this seems to be a lot less sensational than the comment thread makes it appear to be.

Why would US Marshals raid a booth at CES if they didn't have a court order? There might be some reason I'm not thinking of but I would have been surprised to hear that they didn't have one.

The video stated they got a temp restraining order.

Why are these being called hoverboards?

Because everyone wants to be like McFly from Back To The Future? Even though they all have wheels.

I think there was one company that had a bigger board and had fans (or propellers) but it didn't look ready to sell yet.

"By 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Onewheel filed a request with a judge to stop the Trotters from being displayed on the show floor."

So in a matter of a day the judge decided who is right and who is wrong? I thought these patent disputes usually take years.

Can't help but think part of this must have been a publicity stun, why couldn't they simply deny their application for a booth or discreetly show up in the morning and don't let them setup their booth to begin with?

OneWheel does not own or run CES, how would they have the power to deny an application?

I agree it would have been a better move if they could have convinced CES to handle the matter quietly. Lots of reasons why that may not have been possible.

Whether or not the publicity is even positive for one wheel -- they are seen calling in the feds, being generally litigious, and calling attention to the competitor -- is another question. He was definitely doing his best to spin it positive in the Bloomberg article saying this is good for the marketplace, etc.

The CTA (organizers of CES) aren't going to do a thing unless they are served a court order. No way they want to get into the business of arbitrating IP disputes between their thousands of exhibitors!

The OneWheel is manufactured in Silicon Valley.

I just saw that thing on A. Savage video.

https://youtu.be/7Qi5snumoeY?t=3m34s

I'm glad Americans are standing up for their IP. #TRUMP!

I was right with you until the hashtag.

The design is so simple/obvious that I believe many people could have come up with it independently. It seems a bygone conclusion that the Chinese company was intentionally stealing from the US one but that might not be the case. Under patent law it doesn't matter if you invented something independently. I too would probably scoff at the correspondence from the US firm thinking it was some patent troll. I mean how do you patent a "board on a rolling pin"???

I'm not a lawyer, but I have a handful of patents, and have been involved in the question of whether something is infringing on a patent or not. What I've heard from patent lawyers is that obviousness can be very difficult to argue. Taking two patented things and combining them is kind of the gold standard for obviousness. From there, it gets more difficult and murky.

Obviousness under patent law is judged at the time of the invention. Most (all?) inventions would have eventually being discovered by someone else. Patents are the reward for getting there first.

Chinese companies ignore patent letters and suits because they are essentially immune from US courts as long as they stay under the radar and don't sell directly in the USA.

> I mean how do you patent a "board on a rolling pin"???

You can reduce any invention to a couple word summary that seems absurd.

The transistor is "just" an amplifier.

There is prior art for the design so we cant tell if they ripped off the US guy. Also look at the history of patent trolls.

Whether you believe in the general utility of patents in the information age or not (and to be clear, I don't), this is a good reminder that patents are violence. You can't be truly non-violent and also believe in patents.

I'm not a fan of patents but I don't understand your comment. What exactly is violent about this?

Patents themselves aren't violent. Patents allow one to invoke violence by the state by having armed men (US marshalls in this case) confiscate property and in some cases arrest people.

Yes. In many cases individuals are allowed to invoke the power of the state. By calling that power "violence" are you arguing that the state should not be able to take action to protect people?

Not arguing for or against anything. Armed men taking property and prisoners is violence regardless if it is sanctioned by the state or not. Civilized society wants that sort of violence if it is applied to violent crime. The same society might debate if that sort of violence is appropriate for other activities.

The only way you can enforce a patent is by having armed law enforcement do so (as they did in this case), or relying on the perception that armed law enforcement could do so.

That said, this argument would essentially hold that to live in civilized society (at least, as we understand civilization), to take advantage of tax-funded things like roads, to make use of government-enforced currencies, etc. is also violence. Which might be technically true, but is not useful, and certainly not useful for the goal of getting the rest of the world to be less violent; I know very few people whose brand of non-violence does not involve attempting to stop other people's violence. Indeed, a serious application of this argument would require one not to use the Internet, which was government-funded (i.e., funded by tax dollars, i.e., funded by money taken at implicit threat-of-gunpoint from citizens) out of military budgets (violence incarnate) and is still a bit government-run, and it would certainly require one not to use Hacker News, given how much Y Combinator firmly requires a strong conception of private property.

So I think our pal Sonic the Hedgehog's famous quote applies, although the context is slightly different: http://i.imgur.com/wi1QIgG.jpg

So I think our pal Sonic the Hedgehog's famous quote applies, although the context is slightly different: http://i.imgur.com/wi1QIgG.jpg*
Well that certainly wasn't expected, but was good for an absurdist chuckle. Why would someone put this together with Sonic? Purely for the absurdity?

I think the backstory there is roughly https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/616316157109256192
(The remainder of @sonic_hedgehog is also amazingly absurdist, but usually not particularly anti-capitalist.)

I like your thought process but I think you follow an incorrect path of reasoning because of the implicit assumption that if an act is considered violent it is to be avoided. The world is full of violent people who are only kept at bay by the threat of counter-violence. For that reason, violence is required in a civilized society. So we shouldn't avoid calling it what it is, and should acknowledge it so we can make good decisions about when to apply violence.

> The only way you can enforce a patent is by having armed law enforcement do so
Couldn't you just take them to court?

"... or relying on the perception that armed law enforcement could do so."
I can take you to court, and you can say, "sure, whatever, you and what army." You'll only care if you think there's an actual army (or police force) who'll make you do what the courts tell you to do. Otherwise any judgment against you doesn't bother you.
Note that this is exactly why Chinese knockoffs/counterfeits of US tech products are such a big market: US courts have no jurisdiction in China, and the US Marshals can't keep up with all of the imports.

Might be true that violence is needed in our civilization. Hard to say; hard to predict the future.
But your examples aren't really a good argument. Internet might've been started by anybody. Furthermore, who knows how many great things we didn't do yet because the gov't took our money at gunpoint. And so on.

Please explain why "patents are violence." (And while you're at it, what does being "truly non-violent" mean?)

It's pretty clear to me that the OP is saying that a Patent is basically worthless outside of it's capacity to draw force from a state actor. Specifically in this case, that coercion took it's most direct form with armed federal officials seizing property.

But isn't that true for any law? Fraud and theft can only be prevented or the perpetrators punished by armed state actors (policemen). That does not mean the entire judicial system is violent.
In fact, this usage of the term 'violence' is confusing and likely incorrect. The same reasoning can be used to say stuff like 'Law is violence. Freedom is violence. Business is violence.' Since each of those are run by laws enforced by policemen and armed federal agents.

All true.
It's pretty typical rhetoric in libertarian circles to call anything that is done by or with the help of government as "violence."
Kind of falls apart at a certain point, but I see where they are coming from.

All laws are enforced through violence. By your definition I'm not sure you can be "truly non-violent" and also believe in law.

> All laws are enforced through violence
That's simply not true. There are many different kinds of laws. In the US you may believe the difference between Civil, Criminal, Tort, etc all boil down to violence for various reasons, but there exist many laws (some religious laws) that only result in shame or reputation changes. The belief that the english term enforcement implies force in all cases, is a misnomer.

Startups that can't compete on product deserve to be beaten in the marketplace. If a Chinese factory can clone your device just by looking at it, you're definitely not doing anything worthy of a patent.

Downvoted because that is not a reasonable crucible for if something is patentable ("can clone your device just by looking at it").
There is a vast swath of reasonable patents that are easily "copyable" after the fact.
If something wasn't easily copyable then you wouldn't need a patent in the first place.

Airplanes are easily "copyable". That didn't stop the Wright Brothers from patenting the first workable one. And they were engineers, not really entrepreneurs. It would be a shame for the brothers known for giving man the power of flight to never make any money from their achievement.

> Airplanes are easily "copyable".
You're kidding, right?

*were easily "copyable".
The Wright Brothers had hundreds of competitors at the time. They were also very private during their later attempts to get their flying machine to work, so that they could avoid competitors copying their design.

That's absurd, it can look the same and still be a crappy product that has issues like the battery blowing up. The consumer might not know the difference between your board and the lower quality one that looks the same on the outside, and when news goes around with a picture of a board that looks exactly like yours, it hurts your product's sales.

That's exactly what happened in Australia [0]
It's definitely made me re-evaluate some of my AliBaba purchases - I don't think insurance will cover you if your house is burnt down by something that doesn't comply to Australian safety standards.
[0]: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-07/government-raises-hove...

I would be very surprised if there was such an exclusion, and if it were enforceable.

Complying with relevant standards is a completely orthogonal issue to that of novelty and patentability. The question at hand is whether patents should protect products that are insufficiently novel to prevent it being cloned by a competitor. In my opinion, if a person technically competent in the appropriate fields could produce an equivalent design by having the product's functionality described to them then it should not be patentable. This also takes care of such idiocy as the Amazon one-click-buy patent, which is a simple matter to implement once given a description of its functionality.

That's what trademark and trade dress is for.

So let's say you spend a ton on R&D and come up with something unique. You deserve to lose in the marketplace because I can just steal your designs and manufacture an identical product more cheaply (since I didn't have to spend on R&D)?

That's exactly how you clone a design patent. Comment is nonsensical.

The "inventor" at Onewheel, Kyle Doerksen, quickly changed the conversation to about the 'safety' of 'knockoff' products. What does he know about that? Or is he full of it and just slandering another company with a product that looks like "his"? Disgusting attitude for an "inventor".
Hello!!! McFly!! The inventor of the Segway, Kamen, and the inventor of the unicycle, Myers, want to have a word with you...

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