Maybe Toyota is the best technology company, but no one can beat American sheister!

The Japanese copying technology - wow, what a shocker.

Japanese are not copying technology. I have some experience in patent filing, and it is a crap shoot in US. if you look at Paice LLC web site, it is clear that all patents in litigation are by Alex Severinsky and were filed for Hybrid technology way after the first Prius rolled into streets. He has patents for hybrids, which may or may not be first ones. In reality, engineers and scientist do come to some to same conclusions at the same time, it is a matter of filing. Actually, I don’t believe US is any longer the leader in patents filings.

Xyunya, I think you meant “shyster” and I’m not sure how you came away from this story with that conclusion. Toyota was ruled the bad guys because THEY copied technology from Paice which is the American company.

I am not expert on spelling sheister or shyster (I’ve seen both and haven’t seen definition in the dictionary). I checked Paice LLC web site. There is an industry of companies, specifically in North VA & DC area, who don’t produce anything but patents filings or re-filings. I am not arguing court decision on this blog, but realistically why would company file patents with no ability to develop them? Toyota will pay less then 5 mils and $25 per car, which is less then what Toyota pays for detaining of each car before sale. Does amount makes sense to you? Really if a patent would be stolen from inventor, do you think Toyota would get away with such penalty? When 15 years ago interment patent was proven to be lifted auto industry payed over 10 mils upfront.

Meant to write “interment wiper patent”

Paice is just another one of those invention clearing houses. They patent stuff then shelve it for years so that noone can use it. Situations like this are why the gas companies are still in control of the US economy.

At least that American company will get some of that money back for our inventions that are being used by Japan

It’s difficult to patent a NEW idea. I think we’re talking about the art of copying. Watches, purses, oil filters, etc. I stood next to a man at the Detroit auto show who was shamelessly standing next to a new Land Rover sketching an exact copy of the vent next to the rear seat. A vent! Make no mistake, Toyota would steal an idea, and patent it for themselves in a heartbeat.

Raine Man,

Back in a previous lifetime before joining the staff of LeftLaneNews, I was a photographer for the Associated Press in Chicago. One of the many stories I illustrated involved Jerome Lemelson, a guy who claimed he owned the patents to the Hot Wheels track system that we all used to have as kids.

Here is a link to the photo, with a more recent story about the man, who is now deceased.

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers/careerstemplate.jsp?ArticleId=i050202

In the story he talked of a certain vagueness to the description of the patent, which I thought was rather telling. In it, the article states:

“”Further, before 1995, the U.S. Patent Office maintained patent applications in confidence until they were formally granted. This allowed clever applicants like Lemelson (with the aid of their patent attorneys) to secretly postpone, amend, and supplement their patent applications with generic terminology until they covered commercially successful products that came into existence many years after the patent application process was initiated. As Lemelson explained to The New Yorker magazine in 1993, “You don’t say ‘transistor’ when you can use ‘controllable electronic valve’–that sort of thing.”"

While I don’t know details of the alleged Toyota infringement, it’s safe to say we haven’t heard the last of this yet.

Mark Elias
LLN

Mark, I think this story exhausted itself. For Toyota the settlement is a definite victory, cheaper then continuous litigation and risk of loosing whatever ground it gained (tiny settlement and very limited per unit cost). Ditto, for Paice LL, which has no intention to manufacture anything and lead inventor already gone.

Those numbers are peanuts. If the microchip patent is important to the hybrid drivetrain in any way, 4.3 mil and 25 bucks a car is change. Even if Toyota sells a million hybrids, that’s 25 million…. Actually, I changed my mind. That’s good revenue for Paice…I’d take it.

xyunya,

You’re right, it has been exhausted, but it does frost me a bit that techniques described in my comment above are allowed to get through, even though some so-called patent holders or “inventors” (quotes-mine) have reverse-engineered their patents.

Mark

I worked for toyota. And they would tell all there sales people that toyota invented the hybrid tech. They are liers.

To 14: It’s quite easy to develop technology or an idea that you think is original until 10 years later someone shows you a patent. If you know you must infringe on a patent, it is a lot cheaper to negotiate upfront versus having something very successful and negotiating after the fact.

To 7: I wish there was some way to publicly ‘out’ oil companies to show the American public that the oil companies are purposely manipulating the auto companies. Much like the unlikely rumor that Exxon paid a guy $1 Billion for an engine that runs on water. Or that Shell owns several hybrid/electric engine patents.

LOL

Considering Japan’s entire business model is based on copying others’ ideas, I’m sure they saw this coming.

Pay up suckers!!

Sweeet! That’s just wonderful news. Every time I see “Toyota loses…”, it warms my heart.

olds, it’s great that you discovered business model for one of the world’s top economy.
Except for casual racism is there any basis for hate towards Toyota or anything Japanese? FYI, Japan files the same number of patents as US today. Scientifically, Japan is way ahead of us in many(not ALL many) areas or at least on par with us. Furthermore, in their scientific progress they do not rely on foreign students from India, China and East Europe. If anyone of you visited college campus and science and engineering halls you would see how far behind US is falling. It is scary, but fact. Any of you remember solution to quadratic equation? Do you know what I am talking about?

Xyunya…

Japan may have a large number of scientists and engineers… but they also have the highest student suicide rate of any nation in the world.

Who needs the quadratic equation anyways? That kind of high math isn’t used by regular folks on a daily basis. Even the scientists have computers and calculators to run all the equations for them.

If the computers go down… the world stops… noone is gonna be whipping out the pencil and paper.

Of course, does the LLC company make anything for hybrids? Or are they just an IP firm? That should be the determining factor.

“-b +/- the square root of (b squared minus 4ac) all over 2a”
It’s a pretty basic tool when trying to factor in order to work with limits and find derivatives, which is the basis of calculus and fluid mechanics which is especially important for things like designing a car.

19: Japan isn’t a race. Their race is Asian. I never said anything about *asian people*, my comments were about Japanese business culture.

You talk about the loss of scientific research, development, etc. in this country: it’s true and you can blame the government for that. Time was that every month when you paid your telephone bill, it subsidized the greatest research organization the world had, Bell Labs, which invented everything from the transistor, to UNIX, C and C++ computer languages, to cellular phones, and pretty much the basis for all the technology we take for granted today, and the technology that the foreign industries capitalized and thrived on….then of course the government thought it would be in everyone’s interest (in reality only in MCI and Radio Shack’s interest) to break up the Bell System, and since then Bell Labs has withered into the pretty much nothing that it is today.

And congratulations on knowing about quadratic equations. Unfortunately it doesn’t help you with common sense (see my first point). Also you have bad grammar.