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Comment by beachy | Hacker News Reader

> Please be aware of imitators, as the use of jaws with an engraving vise may infringe any patent that issues from my pending patent applications.

Don't really know much about this area, but this comes across as aggressive, overreaching, and leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

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As far as I can tell they are not disclosing the patent application number anywhere. They only give a vague description of what it's supposed to cover. Yet they are being very aggressive about "infringers" of their patent they don't have yet for a product they aren't selling yet.

Former USPTO patent examiner here. Here's the USPTO's new public search tool: https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/static/pages/landing.html?...

I tried the following search:

    (lindsay NEAR2 ste$5).inv.

This just looks for likely variations of the inventor's name in the inventor field.

Selecting only the US-PGPUB database (published patent applications), I came across the following that seem to match:

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230008280A1/en

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230009028A1/en

That's amusing, as original fractal vise's from over 100 years ago (1913) can be found online, including restoration videos of very old ones. Someone trying to repatent such old tech sounds... dubious.

This is supposedly an enhanced version, which could plausibly be patented, but I agree with the parent that it seems a little odd.

They’ve also got an infringement info page that seems pretty aggressive… maybe they’ve had a lot of trouble with knockoffs or something?

The Chinese already copied the design, improved it, manufactured it, and listed it for sale on a global marketplace. The poor guy is finished.

Or, from another point of view, the inventor and the Chinese both copied a design from 1912 [1] which was shown in a widely shown Youtube video in June 2021 [2] - a month before this "inventor" applied for a patent [3]

[1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US1059545 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBeOgGt_oWU [3] https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230008280A1/en

And according to the video it was already patented back then in the US. Hopefully the patent office will reject the application.

The patent office isn't in the business of rejecting applications. That's left for the courts to decide.

I'm not really familiar with the patent application process, but according to [1] the US patent office does reject application based on prior art.

[1] https://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s706.html

However, in practise it issues many patents that have prior art

https://www.eff.org/issues/patents

Their claimed invention is about attaching fractal jaws to existing engraving vises and not the fractal vise itself.

> The patent pending improvements allow for use with engraving vises and other vises.

But in reality their patent applications doesn't even claim that, but rather a specific method for attaching fractal jaws to existing engraving vises as far as I can tell.

btrettel found what seems to be the patent applications in another comment

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230008280A1/en

https://patents.google.com/patent/US20230009028A1/en

Note that their product isn't available yet.

> Question: How much do they cost? > Answer: Price is not known yet. Production has not started and therefore not enough of them have been made to know what the cost will be. You pre-order with a down payment toward the purchase, and be placed in line. See above.

> Question: When will one be ready for me? > Answer: It will be a while yet before production in quantities begins.

So what we have here is a vastly overcomplicated development of a perfectly ordinary lathe chuck. I guess the patented bit is the vastly improved scope for things to go wrong and jam?

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