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Comment by Roritharr | Hacker News Reader

E Ink seems to be one of the technologies that is hampered solely by patents. It's too sad that we're only going to get major innovations in e ink tech in 15-20 Years...

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We shall see if you are correct very soon (for display tech anyway). Key (initial) patents have already stared expiring and will continue to do so quite quickly (1-5 years).

Check : - https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp - https://patents.google.com/patent/US6422687B1/en?assignee=E+...

I don't understand how that is even possible. Patent owners want their cut, but in the end they want the product to be made, too, because that's the only way they get money. So they will take as high a cut they can negotiate, reducing the margins of the end manufacturer to a marginal price. But that is the case with every "supplier".

At work I looked into integrating e-ink into a product, and the problem seems not patent fees, but availability. Granted, that could be due to patents itself, but the answers I got why it's hard to procure e-ink display were sadly "the end customers don't want it" and "e-ink is dead".

A VC will not invest in a firm, if someone else has the ability to extract all future profits via patent licensing

It's possible because people have different theories of what will benefit themselves. In a functioning marketplace, different suppliers will explore different options. With a monopoly, which is what patents are, you're stuck with whatever notion the patent-owner has.

One perfectly reasonable theory of self-interest is to keep prices very high. Yes, they could drop the price and possibly make more. But they could end up making less, and they'll certainly have to do a lot more negotiation work.

As an analogy, look at Apple. They have less than 20% of the smartphone market, but make 80% of the profit. [1] They were way ahead of everybody and could have captured a much larger share of both the phone and tablet markets. They're using a different theory of self-interest than the other players.

[1] https://www.investors.com/news/technology/click/apple-rakes-...

I think that theory boils down to margins.

The people making zillions of phones make a fraction of the margin Apple does on it's cool phones.

Funny how the name of the company (E Ink) became almost synonymous with the actual tech (EPD, or electronic paper if you want to generalize).

This is quite common pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...

You can't keep things secret by patenting them. These are trade secrets, which last indefinitely. However, trade secrets are granted fewer protections.

and the historic basis of patents is “Strong protection for 20 years, but you gotta share your invention”.

Would/could/do Chinese manufacturers ignore those patents? Are they not able to sell abroad if they do?

Importers would likely get their shipments seized. It's not illegal for manufacturers to export their goods out of China, but US customs doesn't look too highly on importing goods that contravene on registered US IP.

Small time shipments are unlikely to be looked at (eg. if someone buys a single electronic ink display off of AliExpress), but someone actually importing many displays for resale would likely eventually get caught.

Honestly how would you even know if the e-ink displays infringe on IP? I can’t imagine them doing anything.

Enough market/distribution and either the patent owner or a patent troll will find out.

A patent gives you a monopoly which makes things easy.

You occasionally search the market for products that contain your tech (in this case eink), then look in your records to see if they bought/licensed from you.

But is it that infringement can be proven only by a court? So can US customs do any thing in such cases, even if we assume they have the competency to judge if a particular import violates IP.

They file a case, and ask for a preliminary injunction. And once that's granted (which is likely), they take that order to customs, and customs will start looking for those devices in shipments from your supplier or to you.

Nobody in their right mind would invest 100M in a production line that is likely to be shut down.

Usually you don't have to buy the line, you order sub-assemblies from different suppliers and do final assembly.

I think there are already some which do --- we just don't hear about them much because they tend to be fairly anonymous (for good reason).

I remember reading about "fake" Kindle replacement displays showing up on eBay a while ago, not as good as the real thing in terms of image quality etc. but certainly usable, so someone is clearly making them...

It's a common misconception that there is no IP law in China. Patents do exist, and you do have to respect them (at least if it is a chinese patent or you intend to sell into the patent's country). Of course, as with many things there, enforcement is spotty, so you might get away with it for a while. But the days are over where you could completely fly under the radar with a grey market production. It's hard to completely hide your big ass illegal factory in Shenzhen, especially when you have to register every little thing with the state. As in every other country, your competitors or patent owners can just get a lawyer, look up your address, and sue you.

Granted, I do understand that from the perspective of a western entrepreneur trying to do business in China it seems to be a lawless space, especially if you've been burnt by fake products from Alibaba etc..

Considering that you can buy 5$-20$ E ink panels on Alixpress today, I would guess those manufacturers do ignore western patents.

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