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Comment by sitkack | Hacker News Reader

The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be attached to the seat brackets individually. Those brackets need to be braced and not just bolted through plywood.

Having patents on innovations is necessary, but if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all.

https://patents.google.com/patent/US10967762B2/en?oq=1096776...

This this TOS usual for a piece of regulated safety equipment?

The KIOMA Car Seat is provided “as-is, where-is,” without representations, conditions or warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, including, but not limited to, warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. The recipient or buyer is solely responsible for determining the appropriateness of using the KIOMA Car Seat.

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Not sure what you are referring to about a strap being a single point of failure.

Patents > We don't work for free, and we can't buy groceries by giving away years of R&D. Companies are welcome to license our safety innovations, and they know how to reach us. The invitation to do so is on our website.

TOS > Kioma seats come with an industry standard 1 year warranty. The website TOS are different than the product warranty that comes with each seat. Thanks for the heads up though. I'll have the marketing team clarify that.

“We don’t give years of R&D away for free” is a pretty flippant response. You make money selling car seats, and if another company can produce better seats at a lower price then consumers win and lives are saved. Which is ostensibly exactly what you want to happen? Otherwise why even be in the car seat business?

Cmon be nice to the car seat people :). Let’s say it cost $10 to develop this groundbreaking car seat technology, and $1 to make a car seat, so the company charges $1.50 to make up their investment in 20 sales. If they gave away their patent, then another company (who didn’t have to pay that initial cost) could sell the same seats for $1.

This is episode 1000 in our favorite series: why and how capitalism strangles innovation

The flip side is that R&D is a lot easier and cheaper when you don’t have to worry about accidental infringement. But your last paragraph suggests we’re already in agreement.

In any case, I’m fine with companies making the pragmatic choice to pursue patent protection. But being defensive and flippant about it isn’t a good look. It’s much better to argue for instance that you put yourself at a disadvantage if you’re the only business that doesn’t patent their innovations, and that a patent portfolio also has a defensive function.

I mean, you could just be more flippant in response and suggest that the best car seat is the one without a car in the first place

> The flip side is that R&D is a lot easier and cheaper when you don’t have to worry about accidental infringement.

Not when you're a hardware company. You typically rely on external vendors and long feedback loops between iterations for development and have to pay people along the way and in-between. Your remark that someones is morally obligated to give their innovation away before R&D costs are paid for, or really at all outside of a licensing model, is so far left field it might have a seat with the cars.

Thank you for the support. You have eloquently explained the innovation conundrum.

That’s a pretty naive way to look at it. A lot of patented products have a positive impact on the world, should all of these be shared?

What if a small player tries to break into a market with a nee solution? They should give away their IP to the big player purely because it has a positive impact on the world?

Just because their product is more safe doesn’t mean they automatically have to share this with everyone. They put time and a lot of effort into this, and that should be rewarded. The world rewards people with money. Sure some people might be happy with knowing they saved more lives, but eventually most people just want to be rewarded.

> A lot of patented products have a positive impact on the world, should all of these be shared?

Yes. It’s bad to criminalize innovation. Most patentable innovations are not so unique but only a logical next step given prior inventions.

Also, patents favor the big players in any market because they have the money and the will to grind down any newcomers with legal action. The upstart with fewer resources should always be in favor of a level playing field.

If it was obvious, why didn’t some big company already do it?

Likewise, the big players in any field spend vast resources on R&D to produce the better products, and the patent is the only thing that makes that sustainable.

It’s all well and good wanting the world to be a safer place, but every company is beholden to its shareholders and debtors. Resources spent must be recovered or it all falls down.

Strange how all those smaller companies filing patents are so idiotic to work against their own interests. Somebody should tell them.

You underestimate the revolutionary role of patents in allowing to innovate in the open.

Do you want to know what is the active substance of a new medicine? Do you want other researchers to know it and critique it, and build upon it? And for FDA to have easy time learning everything about the medicine? Allow the medicine to be patented.

Otherwise every other factory would start producing it, having not paid anything for years of R&D. Nobody would be able to secure a loan or investment for said R&D, and especially stuff like clinical trials.

The alternative is trade secrets, quakery, and loss of knowledge forever if a particular project fails.

Patents have their downsides. The fee structure could be different (progressive with time), the duration can be discussed, some areas should rather not be patentable (large families of substances, or software), but the idea is pretty sound and important.

> The strap is a single point of failure. Each mount should be attached to the seat brackets individually.

That's not how our Recaro seat works, nor our original baby seat, nor the booster for our older son. Each of them attaches to the seat anchors using a single strap with clips on either end, one on a length adjuster.

This design looks pretty much the same; the plywood is just protection for the car upholstery, and doesn't act as a load-bearing element.

Yes to this.

I wonder if there would be a market for in-built hard modular mount points for the back seats. Like, let's say I'm Tesla. I build in mount points for the back seats. And then I sell accessories for the mounts. Tesla branded baby seats. Child seats. Storage/shelf solutions. Dog cages. Pizza delivery rack. Who even knows how many things one could put back there

It is called Isofix and most modern cars are have those (mandatory in US and EU):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isofix

Like isofix? I think even Teslas have that. Or do I misunderstand?

Your Tesla manual may call it Latch (the US version of EU's Isofix). Same thing but different name.

Adding to the list of “same thing - different name”: in Canada it’s known as UAS (universal anchorage system)

>if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all...provided “as-is, where-is,” without representations, conditions or warranties of any kind

no, individuals should play by the sames rules of the collective as everybody else.

There is nothing wrong with you advocating and/or successfully changing the rules of the patent system so all players must behave this way, but trying to shame a small entrepreneur into being boy scout is ihmo bad for all of us. I bristle at all the moralizing people do on the daily.

I'm advocating for "think globally, act locally", just without puritanism or maoism.

Any seat belt in an automobile is a single point of failure by your logic. Seat belts are fantastic tech, though. Seat belt webbing is designed to take 11,120 Newtons (FMVSS 209). Textile science is pretty cool.

if you have innovations that will save kids lives, you should find a way to make those broadly usable by all.

One way would be for you to buy or license the tech and give it away. Is that something you're considering?

We're happy to license out tech.

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