[time-nuts] WWVB for Time Nuts

[Bob Camp]

Hi

…. which also eliminates a full examination and challenge.

————————

Bottom line as I still see it - 

For Time Nuts one off / home use / zero profit/ personal experimentation, I would not worry about the patents that are or are not present on the receiver for the WWVB format. 

I would not go out and start selling a product without some sort of protection. In that case if they want 10% of my (likely zero) profits, that’s not going to stop me. The same would be true if they are after 1% of my gross (one percent of $10 programmed uP’s times 100 pieces isn’t much). The killer would be some sort of flat license fee dimensioned in kilobucks. Until they come up with details there’s no real way to know how much of an issue this would be, even for a hobby project. 

They have 5 years of protection on this, and the clock has been running for at least a year, maybe more. At the rate this is going, there might not even be a chip before the 5 years runs out. 

Bob

On Aug 10, 2014, at 11:01 AM, Jim Lux <jimlux at earthlink.net> wrote:

> On 8/10/14, 5:41 AM, Bob Camp wrote:
>> Hi
>> 
>> Keep in mind that it’s relatively cheap (big company wise) to get a patent. It’s only got major value once the courts uphold it as valid. That process costs real money. I’ve seen a variety of estimates on how many patents get issued that would never stand up to challenge. None of the estimates I’ve seen have been below 50%, some are a lot higher. Since the patents for "sunscreen that’s only useful on the moon" also get tossed into some of the estimates, who knows what the real numbers are.
>> 
>> Often the protection process becomes a “we have 689 patents on this gizmo” sort of thing. Even if 99% of them are bunk, it will cost you a lot to prove that. You still would have to pay based on the 1% that turn out to be valid. The net result is a system that never challenges (and clears out) the junk.
>> 
> 
> Or, "we have 689 patents and you have 325 patents, so let's cross license our pools"
> 
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