Microsoft Accused Of Stealing Kinect From Columbian Inventor

digitizor.com

12 points·dkd903··10 comments

This article misses one thing: MS didn't develop this part of the tech, PrimeSense did. You can see their stuff at http://www.primesense.com/?p=487

MS built the software that actually made sense of the data, but PrimeSense is who developed and built the technology that's in question here.

Precisely, unless he can show the PrimeSense guys based their technology upon his then they can use a clean-room defence to get the patent invalidated.

IANAL but I don't think that is how patents work. If person A patents his invention, and person B completely independently invents exactly the same invention without having any knowledge about person A's work, person B still cannot just ignore the patent.

No, but B can use the fact that they independently invented it to show that the idea failed to meet the innovation criteria of patents and that what the patents covers is in fact an obvious derivative from existing ideas and get the patent invalidated on that basis.

The PrimeSense patents I found were filed in January of 2008, Hei-D patents weren't filed until March of 2009.

It looks like PrimeSense had the technology first.

He can claim it all he wants. He needs to prove it.

Colombian.

/pedant

Columbia != Colombia

Let me get this straight, he invents a new technology, doesn't patent it, then sends a prototype to one of the most vile software companies in the world, then gets fucked over big time... and he's surprised??

The patent process sucks, and takes a long time to get it to go through. The article says he filed in 2009, but he still has yet to get it. Maybe he was hoping to get a job in Microsoft Research or something?

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