Our patent system is a joke - Golden Ear Sub

[Mark Seaton]

Pardon the rant, but as an audio science oriented forum, I though this might be a fun place to throw this at the wall. While hardly a new phenomenon (ie Carver compact sub patent), to see patents like this granted is mind boggling.

Here's a press release and coverage of the granted patent:
"GOLDENEAR AWARDED A US PATENT FOR ITS SUPERSUBS’ UNIQUE DUAL-PLANE INERTIALLY-BALANCED TECHNOLOGY"

For those interested, here's a direct link to patent No 9,462,391.

rant/

I'm frankly bewildered that Golden Ear was granted this patent which should have been quickly dismissed as an obvious extension of long used designs. I was quite amused with how much verbiage was used to describe a 6 sided enclosure in the patent, I can only guess with the intent of exhausting the examiner.

They basically patented a down firing passive radiator to "couple to the floor" with the opposed passive radiator counterbalancing the shaking that would result from a heavy passive radiator on the bottom. There are many performance reasons we don't see many designers choosing this option, as the biggest benefit is form factor/aesthetic, but to call it novel and grant a utility patent with no facilitating technology is mind boggling.

The patent process has become a joke. More importantly it's become a tool for the legal and marketing departments of larger companies in their respective market, while also being a terribly difficult and expensive to navigate system for those with real inventions. /rant

 

[amirm]

The patent process is completely broken for sure. They hire college grads as evaluators with no specific field experiences to go through a mountain of patent apps. Prosecution and defense of the same is another disaster where any judge can be assigned to the case with zero technical knowledge. Ditto if it has a jury.

On this, counterbalance dual drivers are common. Have they narrowed this claim to also include the bottom and top radiators to make it unique?

 

[RayDunzl]

Apple seems to have patented the round cornered rectangle in 2012.

https://www.google.com/patents/USD670286

 

[Mark Seaton]

The patent process is completely broken for sure. They hire college grads as evaluators with no specific field experiences to go through a mountain of patent apps. Prosecution and defense of the same is another disaster where any judge can be assigned to the case with zero technical knowledge. Ditto if it has a jury.

On this, counterbalance dual drivers are common. Have they narrowed this claim to also include the bottom and top radiators to make it unique?

Correct and agreed. They narrowed the claim and managed to imply that coupling to the floor by firing the PR at it was a benefit. Thus they asserted that a normal down firing PR's cause distortion and unwanted shaking from the required mass of the PR and their use of a top PR counters this shaking while still allowing for that coveted coupling to the floor. They also threw in there some bizarre ratios of driver mass to PR mass, along with a few other odd ratios to make it seem rather specific in intent.

 

[Thomas savage]

America, keeping lawyers employed .

 

[Sal1950]

America, keeping lawyers employed .

And the UK is any different with their wig heads. LOL

 

[Cosmik]

They also threw in there some bizarre ratios

That reminds me of this one
https://www.google.com/patents/US5847450
https://www.embeddedrelated.com/showthread/comp.arch.embedded/33379-1.php

A microcontroller is a complete computer on a chip, containing internal memory. Its external pins are for analogue or digital input/output only and have no relation to the internal bus widths. Microchip bamboozled the patent system into patenting the concept of a microcontroller whose external pin count is less than the internal data bus width - two unrelated numbers. They used a completely spurious ratio to monopolise the field of physically small microcontroller ICs. There was no invention or technical merit whatsoever.

 

[FrantzM]

Well in that case I wonder who would give a ... about this design? What does it do better than dual-opposed or any other not-yet-patented subwoofer configuration? True the patent system and many other stuff are broken but repeating it ...
in this very case who would really care?

 

[iridium]

Well in that case I wonder who would give a ... about this design? What does it do better than dual-opposed or any other not-yet-patented subwoofer configuration? True the patent system and many other stuff are broken but repeating it ...
in this very case who would really care?

"who would really care" The marketing department & the idiots that buy marketing!

iridium.

 

[amirm]

BTW this is an application the patent is not granted.

What? They did a press release on just the patent application???

 

[RayDunzl]

Uh-oh...

Ever seen a hat like this, with the slider you pull up under your chin?

Beloved Harman owns the patent for that function for headphone wires.

https://www.google.com/patents/US20140119590 and https://www.google.com/patents/US9137596

I thought they had a higher calling.

 

[FrantzM]

The last few examples could be the epitome of a broken system ... Wow !!!

 

[amirm]

I say the guy who invented the same for the hat, was sleep at the helm not doing the same for the headphones!

 

[iridium]

NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

You want a mechanical or plant patent.
Lawyer costs a fortune & most are inept.
Government [USPTO] patent process cost big $ now & takes years.
OK, so you are fortunate & receive your [chewed-up] patent.
Now the Big Corporations & everyone reads your patent, and everyone sees you are not a Big $$$ guy so they ignore your rights & copy you.
Does the USPTO protect you for all the time & $$$ spent; NO. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO

YOU ARE SCREWED.

MONEY & TIME DOWN THE DRAIN.

Hire a lawyer [they love it]; more MONEY & TIME DOWN THE DRAIN.

iridium.

P.S. Please excuse me for being so positive.

 

[amirm]

Speaking of Apple and patents, this recent news seems to bode well for controlling the crazy awards for tiny aspect of a product design: http://pcworld.com/article/3130254/...size-of-damages-for-apple-design-patents.html

Supreme Court wrestles with size of damages for Apple design patents
Justices appear to question why an award should be based on the total profits on infringing Samsung devices.

The justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, hearing arguments in a long-running Apple and Samsung patent dispute on Tuesday, seemed to question a 19th-century law that allows huge infringement damages in design patent cases.

Questioning lawyers for the two companies, the justices repeatedly referred to a law that instructs courts to award patent damages based on the total profit from the infringing device, instead of from just the infringing pieces of the device.

The total-profit rule for design patents may work for simple products, but not for complex ones like smartphones, Justice Stephen Breyer said. "For wallpaper, you get the whole thing," he said, according to Fortune.com. "A Rolls-Royce with the thing on the hood? No, no, no you don’t get profits on the whole car."

Other justices questioned how juries could divide up the value of one piece of a product. "If I were a juror, I wouldn't know what to do," Justice Anthony Kennedy said, according to a Reuters report.

The case stems from a long-running patent dispute between Apple and Samsung. In 2012, a jury found that some older Samsung smartphones infringed three patents on aspects of the iPhone's design, including its face and rounded bezel design and the icon layout on its home screen.

The jury originally awarded Apple $930 million. An appeals court later cut the damages related to the design patents to $399 million but stood by the all-profits rule. Samsung, along with several other tech groups, has argued that huge infringement awards for small design elements of a product will inhibit innovation.

Justices appeared to question the original amount of damages, said Charles Duan, director of the Patent Reform Project at digital rights group Public Knowledge, which supported Samsung.

"The argument this morning reflected the Supreme Court’s deep concern for balanced patent law that provides an appropriate measure of damages to patent owners without overcompensating them with a windfall," he said in a blog post. "The justices largely seemed to agree that awarding damages for an entire complex product, like a smartphone, is inappropriate for a design patent that covers only a small portion of that product."

in a press release. "We are hopeful that the Supreme Court will give a sensible and fair reading to the design patent statute. That would be a win for businesses and consumers alike."

 

[Dan Wiggins]

Well in that case I wonder who would give a ... about this design? What does it do better than dual-opposed or any other not-yet-patented subwoofer configuration? True the patent system and many other stuff are broken but repeating it ...
in this very case who would really care?

Nothing, actually. Having a downfiring passive is a VERY BAD THING. To be an effective PR, you want the resonant frequency to be as low as possible, so the response notch is well below the pass band. To do that means a soft suspension and/or heavy mass. Which means a lot of sag when facing down (when I was making and selling PRs, back in the early 2000s, it was a normal calculuation to check downfacing sag) - up to 20-30% of the mechanical motion available in the PR. Which means big nonlinearities in operation.

And you also get a modulation of the air load on the front of the cone - as the cone moves down, the area around it is compressed between the cone and the floor. This increases the acoustic loading on the cone, which adds further nonlinearities to the system.

Overall, having a downward firing PR is a very bad thing. You can get away with a driver (as they typically have higher resonant frequencies and much lower mass, so lower levels of sag - and they also are actively driven so with a low output impedance amp the acoustic loading modulation is reduced) but with a PR - you're courting disaster.