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Comment by hkmurakami | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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)

> 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)

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.

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