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Comment by molsonhart | Hacker News Reader

We didn't invent interlocking plastic discs, but we did improve them and have a patent pending for that improvement. You're right that it is copyright for the helicopter. There is also a trademark infringement claim for "building flakes" vs. Brain Flakes®

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What is your improvement? The products look the same, but it can be hard to tell in an image.

Without disclosing that you too are a copycat the article is a bit disingenuous.

I'm sure many of them went too far and are infringing your trademarks, but I'm equally sure that many others are knockoffs to the exact extent you are.

> What is your improvement? The products look the same, but it can be hard to tell in an image.

My grandma used to have the old ones when I visited as a kid. It's been a really long time, but I think the originals had deeper slots and the actual chips were a bit thinner. By making the slots shallower and the chips thicker they'd be less prone to bending which prevented them from fitting perfectly perpendicular after a bit of wear.

That kind of incremental improvement strikes me as the sort of thing that shouldn't be patentable. Can you really patent "changing the physical dimensions a bit so it fits better"?

> That kind of incremental improvement strikes me as the sort of thing that shouldn't be patentable.

It is. Almost all patented inventions are improvements of other inventions. Foundational new technologies are a rare exception.

> Can you really patent "changing the physical dimensions a bit so it fits better"?

It depends. If the claimed dimensions were new and non-obvious, then maybe. The obviousness analysis would depend on the particular facts of the case and could be quite complex. The questions would probably be ones like, “Would a person having ordinary skill in the art be able to discover the claimed dimensions without undue experimentation?” or “Do the claimed dimensions provide an unexpected result?” or “Does the prior art ‘teach away’ from selecting the claimed dimensions?” So, again, it depends.

Do they have a patent on it though? The article mainly talks about IP, copyright and trademarks. (although IP and patents are probably the same thing, IDK)

They have a pending patent application. It would have to be allowed by the patent office to become a patent.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200254357A1/en?invento...

Clearly solid engineering, but one hell of a stretch to call that an invention. I wonder if it'll be granted.

I can't believe I ever considered being a patent examiner after I finished my engineering degree...

You can't enforce pending patent applicaition, only an issued patent. Also, as OP notes in the article, actually trying to enforce an issued patent in court is time consuming and expensive. It's also difficult if the copycat is based outside the US. They could just close their doors and open up the next day under another name.

You are replying to OP who wrote the article. I might have missed it but I don’t think they described any ongoing legal action against this particular copycat.

jimmy,

believe it or not, this isn't my first rodeo.

@molsonhart. I believe it from your (apparently) successful ip protection biz. :-) I think the disconnect is that I'm a patent guy, and your patent advice seems confused/incomplete/misleading. But this makes sense because your primary protection tools for attacking direct copycats would likely be TM and CR, not utility patents.

Agreed.

Or, make a small improvement to the existing toy themselves or (I imagine quite convincingly) claim they're copying from an earlier, expired patent.

It seems expensive and unlikely to prevail in any case.

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