Hacker News Reader

Comment by samworm | Hacker News Reader

The way these things normally work is that you're only allowed to use the name and marks if you're an official licensee.

So if you put the USB logo on your marketing and claim to have a "USB Mini" connector in your specifications then you could be in trouble on two fronts: (1) the usb folks can sue you for using their IP and (2) purchasers can claim the product is not "as described" which may given them certain rights dependent upon the location.

Not using the official logo shouldn't be a problem in hobby market. Everyone will recognise the connector. Not being allowed to identify it as USB2 or USB3 or whatever, that could be a problem. I'm sure there are creative ways around it though.

View on HN

One should be able to say "Compatible with USB2", in the similar way 3rd party companies made cartridges for the Nintendo.

And about squatting on a VID.. Well, they should have thought about pollution of their namespace on their anti-hobbiest policies. They frankly deserve it.

> One should be able to say "Compatible with USB2", in the similar way 3rd party companies made cartridges for the Nintendo.

The most prolific of those 3rd party companies was sued by Nintendo and lost.[1][2] Although that case is not directly applicable, and had different circumstances. I thought it was worth mentioning.

[1] http://digital-law-online.info/cases/24PQ2D1015.htm

[2] http://www.1up.com/do/feature?pager.offset=1&cId=3146206

At this point, I doubt that certification matters for many applications, particularly in the consumer sector.

"Connects to your computer at speeds up to five gigabits per second using industry standard USB cable," probably covers everything short of a the edge cases such as government procurement contracts.

It doesn't matter at all for the hobbyist sector. If you can afford to push a paid-for consumer product, you can probably afford the license.

V-USB for AVR gives you 2 VID/PID pairs for 500 Euro. http://www.obdev.at/products/vusb/license.html

There's also a 10EUR hobby package which gives you a pair for personal use only.

FUP applies, but if you're breaking it then really you should go legit and pay the USB feds their protection money.

How are these guys getting round it?

Considering how many cheap Chinese knock-offs out there seem to go unpunished, I don't think the USB folks are really successful at enforcement.

Anecdote: apparently going after Chinese knock-off companies is a gigantic PITA. I've worked with those who have tried going after them. File a complaint about company ACBD. A week later, company ABCD never existed, but company XYZ is operating at the same factory. Amazing!

I can wholeheartedly confirm this. The cheap Chinese knock-off companies are basically beyond the reach of Western law.

Which could be said about so many such knockoffs; however, the issue of Chinese and other non-US counterfeiting is harder precisely because they're non-US, and operating in manners and areas where the legal system is not prone to caring about US regulations (for better or worse).

So whether you can safely ignore this depends largely on how easy it is for this body to successfully throw the book at you, and others' success in this area doesn't really mean anything unless you're able to operate in the same circumstances, which I doubt most of us are.

So... the FOSS hardware guys should operate Chinese manufacturing shell companies?

Let's just call it ThatThing2 and ThatThing3 in the hobby community :P

How about BSU? It could stand for a lot of things... but I like Bull Sh!t USB. Which I think is an appropriate eye-poke response to an annoying organization.

BHC - Butt-Head Connector

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/butt-head-astronomer.ht...

As far as I remember, only the logo is trademarked, not the phrase USB. So you could still state your product has USB, you just can't display the logo anywhere.

Then market it. SUSB - SuperUSB. Who wouldn't buy something that's the-same-but-Super?

"YouSB"

Aka Sue-Us-B :P

It's like if you want your CD to have the "compact disc- digital audio" label you have to comply with whatever colored book. People stopped caring about that long ago and won't care much for USB either as long as it works.

"[...] using a connector included on all modern computers".

Call it BSU2 and BSU3.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com