Patents and case designs

[Gadgety]

Not to be hostile, but can you please elaborate on how these case designs aren't blatant rip offs of the NFC S4 Mini and the Zaber Sentry? So far the major differences I can see are:

Catz C-1
- Flipped the GPU over to face the same way as the CPU cooler
- Full wrap around bezel vs. 2/3 wraparound bezel in the same 5mm aluminum (bend radius, finish, etc.) as the S4 mini uses
- ODD support behind GPU

Catz C-SFX
- Flipped PSU orientation

I'm all for people being enthusiastic about case design and I recognize that there are only so many ways you can arrange a power supply, motherboard and GPU inside of a box. That being said, when the whole aesthetic and layout is 95% the same as another product in the market (especially cases as easily visible as the Sentry and S4 Mini), I think someone needs to say something. I also think it's worth mentioning that I am aware of at least one patent you are violating here if you are planning to sell or produce these cases. If you haven't expressly received written permission to use these features, you might be stepping on some toes without realizing it.

You bring up really interesting questions. Can case layouts be patented? Or can they be copyrighted? What about looks? Finishes? What are the differences it terms of protection whether something is patented vs copyrighted? Does national patent law offer any differences in protection? I believe that US patent law offers protection on looks, whereas European patent law requires a functional difference. Witness Apple's phone lawsuit against Samsung, arguing that Samsung copied the iPhone look. In addition there's something called sufficient patent height, a minimum technical knowledge treshold, to warrant a patent. I know some European companies in certain industries open up subsidiaries in the US in order to patent inventions that they are not able to patent in Europe, primarily when the patent is about aesthetic functionality rather than technical. Another view is that patents are only worth something if the patent holder has the means to fight in court. This could be interpreted as an advantage to large companies, with law departments, and big budgets. SFF Forum members may present great designs, and technical solutions, and these could be patented by commercial organizations with the means to fight in court. Yet another perspective is that it could be hard to patent something if it's already in the public domain, because then the technical knowledge threshold isn't sufficient to warrant a patent.

 

[K888D]

You can't really patent a 'case', only specific features that solve a specific problem in a specific way that hasn't been thought of before. Once its out in the public domain then it is no longer patent-able.

You can however apply for a 'design registration' which protects the exterior appearance, this is difficult to enforce unless you are really clever with the drawings you submit, i.e. if your case has 10 vent grills and you include them in the submission drawings, then your competitors only have to take out 1 grill and they can copy the entire design as their version now has 9 grills. You could perhaps break down the design into different aspects to protect individual 'design elements' as separate submissions, but I guess this would start getting expensive.

So you have to be clever with what 'lines' you submit in your technical drawings, for instance the outer silhouette, or a specific curve or pattern of lines, but at the same time your product has to be recognisable and easily understood from the lines you submit. Its not that expensive to register a design, but the back and forth consultation with the patent lawyers trying to nail this aspect down may get expensive, if you don't get it right then your registration is worth jack all.

Full Patents are very difficult to obtain and take years to get granted while you have to sit back and wait for your idea to get contested, they also need filing individually in each country you want to enforce it in, it can very quickly mount up in costs into many, many thousands of dollars. The company I work for have an entire department dedicated to IP and they liaise with us engineers to help make it an easier process as well as reducing the cost of working with third party lawyers, I think if you were going at it alone then the expenditure and effort required to obtain a patent would not be worth it unless you think your idea is going to earn you something like a hundred grand.

 

[iFreilicht]

Can case layouts be patented? Or can they be copyrighted?

Depends on how much money you have, I guess. Pretty sure Silverstone had a layout for 90° rotated motherboards in PCs, but I don't know whether it was ever enforced. In seriousness though, K888D's answer is a pretty good overview.

 

[Phuncz]

I moved some of the posts from the Catz C1 & C-SFX project case topic to keep the discussions seperate.

 

[K888D]

Sorry for adding to the high jack of the other thread!

 

[Kmpkt]

I think one of the things to consider here, aside from patentability and formal legal entitlement to design and utility elements, is who we are willing to let use our community as a springboard. The community is ever-growing and if it isn't already the largest SFF community on the web, I'm sure it will be shortly. That means for anyone launching a new product, this is a significant venue in which to gain market traction.

I called out the Catz C-1 for what I perceived what I thought to be a pretty significant design infringement on the NFC S4 Mini. I actually chased the same case off of Hardforum last week under the handle "Bieberfever", although considerably less aggressively. After I acted, everyone came to the C1's defence which effectively acted as consensus on the issue, hence my backing down and apologizing. As with everything about this community, I expect this to develop organically over time and be less contentious each time the issue comes up due to precedent set in situations like this.

That being said, one of my hopes/expectations for the SFF.net crew, especially existing case developers, is that we will function as something of a team. While this isn't explicitly stated as one of the goals of this community, I think there is something to be said for protecting one's own. Eventually someone will come along with a product that is a wholesale poaching of one of our member's products and I hope at that time they will get chased out of town. Obviously would love to hear other people's opinions on the matter.

 

[EdZ]

While this isn't explicitly stated as one of the goals of this community, I think there is something to be said for protecting one's own. Eventually someone will come along with a product that is a wholesale poaching of one of our member's products and I hope at that time they will get chased out of town. Obviously would love to hear other people's opinions on the matter.

This sort of offense-on-the-behalf-of-another tribalism very rarely ends well for anyone involved, or even nearby. If someone states clearly "X has made a carbon copy of my product - see features Y and Z that are unique design choices I've made that would not be included by accident - and they are not responding to me asking to cease/trying to claim that I copied them and threatening me with legal action/etc" (situations that sadly are not uncommon) then working together to spread the word about that is one thing. 'Chasing someone off the board' because their design looks somewhat similar to someone else's is quite another.
If nothing else, the latter response is simply an impolite way to do things.

 

[Josh | NFC]

I love this community because I think of it as a guild. We share ideas, insight, equipment, talents, etc with each other to help each other grow. The small form factor industry is big enough for everyone here.

However I think one of the benefits of being in a guild is helping each other credit where ideas come from so the originators can benefit from their reuse instead of the reusers just benefiting of the originators. A friendly "This idea was inspired by X whose project can be found here" would be a nice touch and promote the family bonds we are growing.

Even Weird Al makes sure to get permission and work closely with the artists he parodys, even though he has 100% right to do it without their permission. This has only made him more successful and more respected.

There are ways to benefit from each other's ideas and still make them our own--put our unique flair on it. If we don't stick up for each other and try to promote photo credit/idea credit/etc then what do we really have here? If it is plagiarism to do it in a school paper, it is plagiarism to do it here in the real world. That's why I think universities are so strict...to train students to respect ideas. This is especially important to me because some ideas are so common place now their origin is taken for granted, and I think that is a shame. It does affect me, so I am biased, but it is even happening to @dondan now and that is also just a shame.

Build on other's ideas, but respect them. And this community needs to help encourage the respect of ideas.

My 2c.

 

[Josh | NFC]

As a concrete example, here is an email I wrote to Valve in early 2012:


Warmest greetings from a fan of Valve software and an admirer of the Steam platform. My name is Josh Sniffen and my driving passion is finding ways to make computers exciting. You can take a look at some of my work on my website, nfc-systems.com.

While many gamers take pride in their PC, many more (sadly) do not. Many of these gamers are used to their PCs being slow, frustrating, and bulky and see them as a tool for getting homework done. Because they perceive building a gaming PC as challenging or expensive, they stick to consoles and cell phones, and thus miss out on the greatness of PC gaming.

Since 2009 one of my pursuits has been to present console gamers with a PC that plays by their rules: small, fast, inexpensive, and easy. Although cliche, the time has never been better to make this move in force--powerful hardware is cheap and efficient, and digital gaming distribution is king.

The following system has been under development for several months, and shown to my friends at Sapphire Tech and Patriot Memory at CES under NDA this year. Although the chassis for the final version, the “S3”, is in the final stages of production, the inner components and a working prototype have been proven.

Our “sweet spot” gaming PC, running under 160 watts and fitting in a 12.5”x8”x2.25” box:

i5 2400s (3.3Ghz quad core CPU)
Sapphire Radeon HD7770 1GB
Patriot Pyro SE 120GB SSD
Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB HDD
8GB Patriot DDR3 1600Mhz memory

We have alternate configurations for people who want a faster CPU and a BluRay drive. We have ideas and plans for moving forward with production, marketing, and sales, I wanted to make contact and hear your thoughts and opinions, should they be available.

Thank you for the time and opportunity,

Josh Sniffen
Phone (redacted for post)
Skype: (redacted for post)

 

[K888D]

I'm not sure how I feel about this subject of copying designs. I know there is only so many different ways of putting a case together, but I still think it is important to differentiate your design to the point where it's obvious it's a different 'brand',

I think I would go as far as to say it's more important to have your own unique aesthetic than the actual chassis concept/layout itself being the same, as I said before there is only so many ways to lay out a case, but unlimited possibilities for styling it. Piggybacking off someone else's hard work is a little disrespectful and lazy!

I'm not pointing any fingers, it's just my opinion!

 

[K888D]

As a concrete example, here is an email I wrote to Valve in early 2012:


Warmest greetings from a fan of Valve software and an admirer of the Steam platform. My name is Josh Sniffen and my driving passion is finding ways to make computers exciting. You can take a look at some of my work on my website, nfc-systems.com.

While many gamers take pride in their PC, many more (sadly) do not. Many of these gamers are used to their PCs being slow, frustrating, and bulky and see them as a tool for getting homework done. Because they perceive building a gaming PC as challenging or expensive, they stick to consoles and cell phones, and thus miss out on the greatness of PC gaming.

Since 2009 one of my pursuits has been to present console gamers with a PC that plays by their rules: small, fast, inexpensive, and easy. Although cliche, the time has never been better to make this move in force--powerful hardware is cheap and efficient, and digital gaming distribution is king.

The following system has been under development for several months, and shown to my friends at Sapphire Tech and Patriot Memory at CES under NDA this year. Although the chassis for the final version, the “S3”, is in the final stages of production, the inner components and a working prototype have been proven.

Our “sweet spot” gaming PC, running under 160 watts and fitting in a 12.5”x8”x2.25” box:

i5 2400s (3.3Ghz quad core CPU)
Sapphire Radeon HD7770 1GB
Patriot Pyro SE 120GB SSD
Western Digital Scorpio Blue 1TB HDD
8GB Patriot DDR3 1600Mhz memory

We have alternate configurations for people who want a faster CPU and a BluRay drive. We have ideas and plans for moving forward with production, marketing, and sales, I wanted to make contact and hear your thoughts and opinions, should they be available.

Thank you for the time and opportunity,

Josh Sniffen
253.000.(redacted for post)
Skype: (redacted for post)

Are you saying that you are the creator of the Steam Machine concept?!

 

[Josh | NFC]

It is very possible that the group of geniuses (meant sincerely) at Valve came up with exactly the same thing at the same time, and released their concept later that year in the summer. These are the guys who made Half Life and Steam, afterall.

However I was a bit disappointed that my concept was not mentioned in their huge SteamBox press release even though many of the other designs were completely conceptual and by similarly obscure companies and none of them were anything like the layout of the S3 or SteamBox. That small credit and publicity would have really helped me, and would have only helped them too.

The SteamBox would lead to the Dell X51, which would lead to the Falcon Tiki, which would inspire the Digital Storm Bolt, Silverstone's smaller Raven lineup, and eventually the (great) Zaber Sentry. I might have gotten the timing on those mixed up but you get the idea. The big boys at the top credit and leverage the knowledge of their competition to attract customers, how easy is it for them to just give a nod to the little people who won't dent their sales a smidgen. If anything the high cost of our boutique chassis would just drive people to look for inexpensive substitutes.

I really want to stress I am not crying COPYCAT or RIPOFF, as several of these vendors did a superb job taking what was important about the layout and improving it. I love the Bolt, for instance, and the X51 was one of the best PCs I've ever owned (I bought one out of shock after the CES Dell did not show up at). I just am stressing this:

It is important for us small boutique chassis makers to support, credit, and promote each other! We need to help each other out and not be so caught up in the "tribal" mentality as @EdZ pointed out that we are lost in a red ocean.

 

[TheDreamingMonk]

Depends on how much money you have, I guess. Pretty sure Silverstone had a layout for 90° rotated motherboards in PCs, but I don't know whether it was ever enforced. In seriousness though, K888D's answer is a pretty good overview.

They only held that patent in Taiwan.

 

[TheDreamingMonk]

I called out the Catz C-1 for what I perceived what I thought to be a pretty significant design infringement on the NFC S4 Mini.

Once you get to a certain size like we are here, there's honestly less and less you can do to separate from others. Maybe small exterior changes, but even then it's quite hard to be unique.

Layout should honestly play no role in any kind of design infringement, that would do nothing but hinder us. Think about that for a minute. If someone were able to patent a certain layout, you would never see any new cases with that layout from anyone. The NFC S4 Mini / S3 ( Or any other small run case ) would not even exist due to it's layout infringing on a larger company that was able to file the patent sooner and throw more money to have it passed in their favor. Or at an even worse scenario, they'd have to be paying royalties to use such layouts cutting their business down to a level where they wouldn't be turning a profit anyways without making the case cost even more than they do being small runs.

Same thing for vent patterns. And virtually anything else. Buttons, GPU facing up or down, etc.

You simply can't go witch hunting just because someone drew inspiration from a case either. I honestly thought about making my own version of the S4 Mini at one point ( still even considering it ). I like the layout, I like the overall design ( though I'd make my face flat and not have the small hood or brim or whatever you want to call it ). Only reason I haven't is because I was waiting for Kaby Lake and their first ITX boards before I wanted to even plan a case / build. At this point, I don't mind waiting for the case. But I wouldn't want to be witch hunted for drawing inspiration and forking the overall design because you think it's a "blatent rip off". That's a great way to start scaring off potential case designers. Making our community smaller.

Now, if you were take take a case that is rather unique, with it's own systems for doing things like CaseLabs, then have a manufacturer make a nearly identical case with identical features... then we can start talking rip offs. Or if we start seeing some of the more unique INWIN and Lian Li cases duplicated.

 

[Josh | NFC]

Once you get to a certain size like we are here, there's honestly less and less you can do to separate from others. Maybe small exterior changes, but even then it's quite hard to be unique.

Layout should honestly play no role in any kind of design infringement, that would do nothing but hinder us. Think about that for a minute. If someone were able to patent a certain layout, you would never see any new cases with that layout from anyone. The NFC S4 Mini / S3 ( Or any other small run case ) would not even exist due to it's layout infringing on a larger company that was able to file the patent sooner and throw more money to have it passed in their favor. Or at an even worse scenario, they'd have to be paying royalties to use such layouts cutting their business down to a level where they wouldn't be turning a profit anyways without making the case cost even more than they do being small runs.

Same thing for vent patterns. And virtually anything else. Buttons, GPU facing up or down, etc.

You simply can't go witch hunting just because someone drew inspiration from a case either. I honestly thought about making my own version of the S4 Mini at one point ( still even considering it ). I like the layout, I like the overall design ( though I'd make my face flat and not have the small hood or brim or whatever you want to call it ). Only reason I haven't is because I was waiting for Kaby Lake and their first ITX boards before I wanted to even plan a case / build. At this point, I don't mind waiting for the case. But I wouldn't want to be witch hunted for drawing inspiration and forking the overall design because you think it's a "blatent rip off". That's a great way to start scaring off potential case designers. Making our community smaller.

Now, if you were take take a case that is rather unique, with it's own systems for doing things like CaseLabs, then have a manufacturer make a nearly identical case with identical features... then we can start talking rip offs. Or if we start seeing some of the more unique INWIN and Lian Li cases duplicated.

Wow, that really hurts my feelings...

 

[HeroXLazer]

Wow, that really hurts my feelings...

I just don't want to many people to know it. I know it now, but...

 

[TheDreamingMonk]

Wow, that really hurts my feelings...

<3

 

[Lone]

If your designs are copied, then you must be doing something right. This happens in business all the time. Sometimes it's done on purpose, and other times not. Even if our cases aren't copied 100%, they are still inspiring people in some fashion or another.

IMO, I don't think patents are worthwhile unless you have some particular feature that's very special and key to your product. I feel you're better off building a successful brand, excellent product, and loyal customers.

 

[K888D]

Once you get to a certain size like we are here, there's honestly less and less you can do to separate from others. Maybe small exterior changes, but even then it's quite hard to be unique.

Layout should honestly play no role in any kind of design infringement, that would do nothing but hinder us. Think about that for a minute. If someone were able to patent a certain layout, you would never see any new cases with that layout from anyone. The NFC S4 Mini / S3 ( Or any other small run case ) would not even exist due to it's layout infringing on a larger company that was able to file the patent sooner and throw more money to have it passed in their favor. Or at an even worse scenario, they'd have to be paying royalties to use such layouts cutting their business down to a level where they wouldn't be turning a profit anyways without making the case cost even more than they do being small runs.

Same thing for vent patterns. And virtually anything else. Buttons, GPU facing up or down, etc.

You simply can't go witch hunting just because someone drew inspiration from a case either. I honestly thought about making my own version of the S4 Mini at one point ( still even considering it ). I like the layout, I like the overall design ( though I'd make my face flat and not have the small hood or brim or whatever you want to call it ). Only reason I haven't is because I was waiting for Kaby Lake and their first ITX boards before I wanted to even plan a case / build. At this point, I don't mind waiting for the case. But I wouldn't want to be witch hunted for drawing inspiration and forking the overall design because you think it's a "blatent rip off". That's a great way to start scaring off potential case designers. Making our community smaller.

Now, if you were take take a case that is rather unique, with it's own systems for doing things like CaseLabs, then have a manufacturer make a nearly identical case with identical features... then we can start talking rip offs. Or if we start seeing some of the more unique INWIN and Lian Li cases duplicated.

The layout could not be patented by a larger company as there is evidence that the idea already existed elsewhere prior to the patent application, whether that is in the public domain or through an email trail. You have to prove that you came up with idea in isolation on your own or as part of a group working together as part of the patent application.

If you're making the case for your own personal use then there's absolutely no issue with taking 'heavy inspiration' from an existing product, it just becomes unethical (in my eyes) when the copied design is intended to be sold. There is plenty you can do with the design of a case to differentiate your style/brand if you really put the effort in and tried!

I'm not saying that case designers are artists, this is just an example, but if you were to copy a Van Gogh painting and then sell it as an original piece of art, what would that make you?

 

[EdZ]

You have to prove that you came up with idea in isolation on your own or as part of a group working together as part of the patent application.

Sadly not. It is up to challengers to prove that an application does not meet requirements (original, non-obvious, etc) rather than the entity filing the patent It is far from unheard of (and possibly not even uncommon) for a patent to be granted on something that is in the public domain, and for that patentholder to sue any before the patent can be successfully challenged and quashed. In theory, the Search/Search & Examination process should catch any Prior Art during the filing process, but as patents become increasingly technical and patent offices increasingly overworked and understaffed, it is easier for applications to slip through.