FWW responds to LC patent issue *LINK*

Ooh! Ooh! I get to tell this story again!

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>My late father's head, for all of my remembered life and definitely all of our now-33-year-old son's life, could have been used to bounce laser signals back to the moon. At his best, he had a fringe around the edge that would have made a Benedictine monk feel like a fabulous furry freak brother. My parents were up visiting one day when said son, Michael, was about three or four, and someone commented, "Michael looks more like his grandfather every day." Michael's reaction was to slap his hands on his head, to confirm that his (rather abundant) hair was still in place, panicked look on his face.

I thought my father was going to explode, he laughed so hard.

What Judd has already been voted off???

Dan Clermont in Burnaby

>The show doesn't start for another 1.5 hours. Man I should move to the East Coast.

Nah!! then I would miss all of the West Coast hockey games

Cheers

Dan Clermont

There's an easier way...

HC Sakman

>..get a dish or upgrade your cable service to watch at EST shows.

Chico...

How many of us in violation of patents, somewhere?

John Aniano, in central NJ...

>Dan,

Very interesting! Learning this legal "tid-bit" I guess that I immersed myself into hot water, and maybe got other folks here in hot water with me when I posted my design for a plane blade radiusing jig for use on a Tormek (patented...) slow speed grinder a while back...

Actually, where will this end? If someone uses a tool that they purchased, AND devises some improvements to that tool, AND shares the results of these improvements with a forum such as this one, do they automatically put themselves at risk of patent infringement? I certainly hope not...

Off my soapbox,

John

Bigger picture

Wiley Horne--Glendora, CA

>I have a different take on this. The little story is LV versus FWW over a Methods of Work item, and hopefully that is over with.

But there is a big story, too, and I think we should think about LV's actions in regard to the big picture.

Here's a table of manufacturing wages in various countries in the year 2001. If we had 2005 figures, I'm sure they would be different, but not a lot, and surely not in relative terms:

_____________

Table 1

Four Tiers of Wages

Hourly Pay in Manufacturing, 2001

Country Dollars per hour

Japan 16.46

United States 16.14

Europe 14.13

Singapore 6.72

Korea 5.69

Taiwan 5.18

Mexico 2.08

Brazil 2.04

China 0.61

SOURCES: Bureau of Labor Statistics; China Statistical Yearbook, National Bureau of Statistics.

______________________________

The Chinese manufacturing worker is working for wages which are a small fraction--maybe 1/20th or less--of the western worker in Europe, Canada, or the US. Benefits? Forget it.

What these figures are trying to tell us is that protecting intellectual property is not about what jigs you can make in your shop for your hobby. That isn't where Rob Lee is coming from, as he has stated several times. The big picture is: If Lee Valley's intellectual property--or any other firm's proprietary product or label--can simply be appropriated and knocked off at 61 cents per hour, then whose livelihood is secure?

I don't doubt that Lee Valley is dead serious about protecting its intellectual property, and the jobs and well-being of its workforce. But isn't it also clear that we each of us have a stake in this fight, if we want our kids and their kids to have the living standards that we have today. LV's fight is your fight, too.

This is not to take sides in the minor story. Everybody is going to survive that tempest in a teapot, and we should just laugh it off and move on, as many have said. But the big story is for real.

Wiley

Re: How many of us in violation of patents, somewh

Dean Lapinel

>John states:

"If someone uses a tool that they purchased, AND devises some improvements to that tool, AND shares the results of these improvements with a forum such as this one, do they automatically put themselves at risk of patent infringement? I certainly hope not..."

I doubt an improvement would trigger trifling troubling times but if I told people how to make a patented tool on this forum.....well I'd be safe because everyone knows that no one listens to me anyway.

:(

That reminds me the famous SMT infill

HC Sakman

>Perhaps you may remember John. Back in Badger Pond, I posted a drawing (done in different colors) of an infill plane with an adjustable mouth. (I still yet to finish mine!!!) Idea was good but no execution on my part! That was the very first mention of an adjustable mouth for an infill plane anywhere. Too bad I didn't get a patent for it. ;-)

Chico...

Re: That reminds me the famous SMT infill

Todd Stock

>Sort of like set screws for blade alignment...got them on a couple of decade-old planes.

Re: Yeah, but...

Greg B

>Rob,

You mention "legislative intent". That phrase reminds me how little the importance of patent law is widely appreciated. The promotion of progress was so important to the "framers", as we have come to know those who composed the original constitution, that it was included among the powers explicitly granted Congress. (see article I, sec. 8) The Amendments we all regard as so important (free speech, association, bearing arms, reasonable search and seizure...) were just that: amendments to the original core document. Protection of intellectual property was extrememly important. (even establishing a Navy came farther down the list! Of course, collecting taxes came first...)

You've got to protect your intellectual property rights. If you don't, things can wind up unprotected and in the public domain. Just as certain trademarked items such as "escalator", "aspirin", etc., have. That means you've got to say something sometimes. You did.

I'm not a patent lawyer. Just an 18 year criminal prosecutor who learned a long time ago that society works not because of laws or numbers of policemen, but because most good people want it to. And because some people say something when they have to. It falls apart when too many people lose their sense of humor. But then we all knew that.

Cheers,

Greg

Re: How many of us in violation of patents, somewh

Paul Kierstead

>If someone uses a tool that they purchased, AND devises some improvements to that tool, AND shares the results of these improvements with a forum such as this one, do they automatically put themselves at risk of patent infringement?

Just passing on the forum thing for a moment...the improvement thing is an interesting idea actually. If you were to take a patented item and improve the design such that new item was patent-able (i.e. it was novel, etc), it ends up being an interesting situation. Lets say the original item was by LV. Now, to sell your invention, you would need permission from LV (probably for exchange of money, royalties, etc), but LV also could not sell your improvement without your permission. This -- in a way -- gives you a one-up on LV and encourages you and them to make a deal. They are designed this way on purpose to encourage improvements to designs.

On the forum thing; assuming you do not profit in anyway (i.e. don't sell more mags), the patent owner could hassle you but damages would probably be very very small; more likely one would just contact the forum owner and ask the post to be removed. Of course, if you were to make an issue of it, the patent holder could get bothersome.

Simple, unknowing infringement by independent parties not making a buck is not gonna get a judge excited; people should not worry about things like this too much.

OTOH, I am not a lawyer (IANAL), so take what I say with a grain of salt. A real lawyer would tell you to be very afraid and to pay him $400/hr to make sure everything is on the level and that the best option really is to pay all your income in liability insurance, say nothing, do nothing and retain a lawyer for regular advice in the event you should fart and offend someone. Especially the retain a lawyer bit, cause as he will tell you, it is very dangerous not to, and he is just looking out for your best interests. At $400/hr.

Re: Bigger picture

Norman (Ottawa, Ont.)

>Good point..

I heard that a certain large box type store grabs existing patented tools ( not expired patents), and has them manufactured in China under their own house brand name. Reasons are twofold:

1 - Very cheap labor as mentioned earlier

2 - No worry about patent infringement since it is manufactured

outside N. America ..

So they can grab any patented device or tool and have it made both cheaply and also skirt any patent issues.

If true, this is scary for both our future here and livelihoods..

I also agree that most patents today infringe somewhat on a previous patent and therefore makes defending the patent difficult. The prior art issue is also interesting, since the onus is on the person applying for the patent to have performed due diligence and make sure

nothing has been previously published with the idea, concept or design, photo,write-up, etc..

Norman ( who dabbled in patents a while ago, but is still shaking his head over the technicalities)

Moses, it goes beyond that

Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.

>FWW could have made an honest error in publishing a MOW that infringes on a patent. Fine, apologies and all, which is what LV asked for in the first place.

The problem is, FWW had reviewed the tool in question not that long before in a previous issue. LV always mentions "patented" in their catalog when a tool they make has a patent. As the patent owner, LV has to take steps to protect their patent, otherwise said patent can be declared null and void if the patent holder doesn't take steps to protect it. The patenting process is expensive enough that you don't want to do it for nothng.

In patent law, what FWW did is called "inducement to infringe". Had LV not taken any action there would have been grounds for nullifying the patent, at considerable cost to LV. We have to understand that LV had no choice other than to defend their patent. Yet FWW, through their "clarification", tries to portray LV as the "big, bad, corporate behemoth".

I don't believe for a second that LV ever meant to go after individuals who make a copy of the tool for their own personal use. Yet this is the way FWW portayed LV in their half-assed "clarification".

To quote: "We do not knowingly publish such information, and we exercise reasonable care to avoid doing so".

Well, that doesn't fly. Burkin was at least senior, if not executive editor when the tool review was published, therefore he cannot invoke ignorance to justify FWW's action.

Bottom line, it was either incompetence or ignorance that led to FWW publishing the MOW in the first place, plus stubborness and arrogance that kept them from doing the right thing and apologize for their mistake.

BTW, FWW over time has put in his MOW tips that were submitted in previous issues, that goes to tell how much research they do before going to the printer...

This is a personal opinion here, but I believe that this "tempest in a teapot" and the perceived degradation of the magazine (which I agree with) can be traced back to the same person. I'll let you guess who that person is...

Paul Roman, I hope you are made aware of all this, and take measures to restore FWW to its former glory...

DC

Not quite

Dan Donaldson

>They might be able to manufacture it outside the US, and could possibly sell it there, but could not bring it into this country without patent law violation. In many cases, companies also get foreign patents (I am going to guess that LV and any other Canadian company at minimum patents its products in Canada and the US, probably more places) Just manufacturing overseas does not get you off the hook.

I agree completely...

Christopher Fitch@Memphis

>...and I'm contemplating canceling my FWW subscription as well with a polite but firm letter of explanation sent to two individuals.

oh well...

Re: How many of us in violation of patents, somewh

Dan Donaldson

>I am definately no lawyer, but in the case you are citing, I don't see any problem. If you were telling people how to duplicate a jig that exists for a Tormek, or how to build a Tormek, then there might be a problem, but if you develop a jig that is useful on one, but does not exist, then there should be no problem.

Re: Bigger picture

ThomD

>Another thing this is about (the big picture not the FWW vs.LV stuff) is that realistically if you want to rob a patented product you don't have to go via a national magazine. You just download the pictures off your target's website, and start overlaying them with CAD, you can have a design in half an hour if the product is as simple as most woodworking stuff.

I think part of what is happening is that business is drawing circles around consumers, and Patenting them. I heard a recent discussion that said "look, the problem of Chinese ripping DVD movies before they are released and selling them for a buck on the street, may be a thing of the past. We have agreements whereby big box stores will be selling these DVDs for 2 bucks, so that's a marginal buck we din't get before, and for that little difference most people will want the real thing... ". What I want is the DVD for a buck, generic drugs for cheap, the actual brand knife for the 4 bucks it sells for in Asia not 100 and so forth.

The reason patent protection was extended was to provide benefits to the broader comunity. But it is a two edged sword, and it's far from clear it is doing what was hoped for. We are currently seeing deals all over the world that voluntarily set aside patents in the third world. Yet here at home, farmers are hemmed in by frankenseed strategies; we get a lot of drugs that sound good on TV, but insuficient flu vaccines; horses have west nile protection, but people don't; we have significant restriction on the public sphere and artistic freedom. If our leading inventors and businesses were getting rich off of trade, that would be something.

I don't believe the patents have delivered. They have succeeded in raising domestic prices, which was a neat trick.

Of course the mater at hand was all conventional patent stuff, and I'm not talking about that.

Re: Moses, it goes beyond that, and then some

ThomD

>For the sake of argument let's say that is true. Is anyone aware of a single other instance of someone complaining that a magazine's tip or article of this type was a patent infringement? I read last week ,or thereabouts, that a nice tool store is planning on patenting what looks like a standard holdfast. Go for it, I say, free to pursue any lawful course of action. If this carries on we won't be able to communicate about our craft.

The MOW subject mater is not a product of FWW. They don't invent the jigs. They provide space for first person presentations of the method in which an outsider does work. Rust did use sentence structures that sound like an encouragement to make the jig, they are not purely self-descriptive. The first amendment is still in force, treasured by some, and FWW could be viewed as reporting on the methods of work of their readers. I can imagine that a nanosecond of consideration might be in order before responding to the issue.

Why isn't this whole thread an inducement to violate LV (righteous) patent. Lets close down the web while we are at it.

Re: Yeah, but...

ThomD

>Thanks. I'm learning something from all this.

I do miss the good old days (I realize times have changed), when a guy like Fred Bear would invent several industries, share his patents with his competitors to help grow the industry, and beat them anyway.

Re: Moses, it goes beyond that, and then some

Paul Kierstead

>I read last week ,or thereabouts, that a nice tool store is planning on patenting what looks like a standard holdfast.

I read that too and was surprised. Then I read carefully:

.. modern holdfast, made of modern formed wire, in a modern factory.

What they will almost certainly patent is not a standard holdfast, but a holdfast made from formed wire, possibly through a particular process. Forged and cast holdfasts will not be covered. If they found a clever way to do it that is novel and previously unused, then I say more power to 'em. We'll see. In a while the patent filing will be public anyway.

There are lots of bad patents (probably outnumber the good ones by quite a bit), but there are also a lot which aren't as bad as they initially sound and a few are actually much more clever then they sound; new ways to do old things.

Re: How many of us in violation of patents, somewh

ThomD

>Tormek, that's a stone with water and an electric motor? Sounds like a totaly new idea to me.

Though I did own something pretty much like that that was made by Lee Valley. Should be added to my list of things of theirs I own but have never used (believe me the list of their things I use is far longer, sometimes I think they read my mind)

Re: Moses, it goes beyond that, and then some

ThomD

>I agree with you. I could see it being a process, though even there I would be surprised if they can find an actually new way of doing things. To get my moral dander up on their side, I prefer to actually see something new, rather than just something nobody had the brass gigglies to take before a patent officer before.

One of the old school articles I most enjoyed on all this stuff was in Landis'/FWW workbench book where he covered the issues around the workmate patent. It made it sound like yuo had almost no chance of getting a patent even for something that was totally new in the workplace. The inventor didn't even know what the patentable part of his invention was. Nowadays it feels like the S&L action has moved on to the patent office and anything goes.

Whenever I start feeling that things have spun out of control I figure it's time to jump in. My Brother in Law is a patent attorney in Ottawa, time to get busy.

Re: From someone who knows....

Lyn J. Mangiameli

>more of the facts about this matter than most. How?, because I have seen, and still have some (if not much) of the correspondence between the two parties, and have talked directly with a member of the FWW staff about their view of it.

� 'You are free to make what you want�' Perhaps Mr. Lee has changed his mind on the matter of our readers making their own dovetail guides without his company�s �authority.� Anatole may believe he is correct in his supposition, though he is (as I know it) misrepresenting the reality of the situation. There is a difference between LV calling on FWW to reveal it made an error that resulted in inducing patent infringement, and then asking its readers not to act on its error (thus counteracting the original inducement), and woodworkers being told by LV the patent holder that it will not pursue individuals who make what they want for their own private consumption or use. I know this distinction is real, and not so subtle that it has not been grasped by at least some of the folks at FWW.

Anatole goes on: "The facts are simple. Fine Woodworking has never intentionally induced anyone to copy a patented device." Fine, Anatole, I think that most of us are willing to grant that your staff did not "intentionally" induce anyone to copy a patented device. But that doesn't absolve FWW from the responsibility of having unintentionally, perhaps even negligently, used your publication to induced such copying. FWW could have just written early on that FWW regretted the inadvertant trangression and asks its readers not to take advantage of its error.

That FWW failed to seek and achieve a conciliatory resolution to this matter at the earliest opportunity, doing so as a matter of honor much as I referred to in my last post on the subject, caused this matter to drag out for over a year, with lawyers and staff energies expended on both sides. Anatole seems to imply that LV was attempting to extort free advertising and monies from FWW. Another way of looking at it might be that LV, as the aggrieved party, found itself quite justified in attempting to recoup some of the expenses it had to incur in defense of its patent, expenses that would not have been incurred if FWW had offered a more conciliatory and less legalistic response early on.

From what I know, it is a mistake to assume that both parties are just spinning and both are at equally at fault. Alas, the information I received from both sides was given in confidence, otherwise I'd share it directly and in its entirety so you all could draw your own conclusions. I haven't given any specifics, but the principals should recognize sufficient phrases in my comments above to know that I'm not bluffing about what I know and have retained. What I said about honor applies even more strongly now than when I initially wrote those words.

Well said, and appropos as well!

Doug Trembath

>

Re: From someone who knows....

Rob Lee

>Hi -

Just for the record - I've spoken directly with Anatole, and he's a good guy, and has put forth his best effort to resolve this.

I do not read the post in Knots as coming from Anatole, but as issued under his name.

If there's no corporate will to do something - then an employee's hand's are tied.

As many of you can understand....I don't have quite the same constraints here... ;)

Cheers -

Rob

Re: How many of us in violation of patents, somewh

Rob Lee

>Hi Paul -

Your answer's pretty good....

I'll give you a real life example:

We have a clamping product that we designed, and currently manufacture, which has a patent pending. We did an IP search for the relevant claims and found nothing. On an unrelated patent search, after the product had gone into production, we discovered a claim in a Bessey clamp patent that covered an aspect of our product.

We wrote to Bessey, told them that we'd violated their patent (they most likely would never have found out), and asked what they'd like us to do. They responded with a letter saying basically "Thanks for telling us, we grant you a license....".

That's how things are supposed to work - Bessey stays protected, their patent rights are acknowledged, and should they wish to use our dependent claims on the same product - we'd do likewise for them. Everyone benefits... you do, we do, they do...

It's rarely about money, but about respect for the rights of others.

Cheers -

Rob