color Kinetics patents

Van

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So as some of you may or may not know Gordon Pearlman is designing lights for the show currently being produced on our main stage. He's a facinating guy and always has something new and different to discuss, unless he's pulling out some really funny or facinating stories related to the evolution of the modern lighting console. Anyway for thelast couple of days he's brought in some really interesting stories about recent Patents granted to Color Kinetics, If anyone can find the actually news / press releases please feel free to post them in this thread. I'll post them if I can find them. Yesterday they were granted a patent on the process of Sequentially numbering lighting cues. Two days ago they were granted a patent on the use red, blue, and green sources to create "white" light.
Apparently they have also patented the concept of calling any computer controlled dimming system a Light board or console.

All I can say ..... Only in America.

I'm thinkning of patenting the use of Oxygen to sustain bodily functions in carbon based life forms. You guys are going to own me a Ton of money !:mrgreen:
 
Again proof that the world has gone mad! Tis like Cadbury trademarking the colour purple...
 
Those stories sound like tall tales to me.
 
Hey, people have patented pieces of DNA, DNA that appears naturally inside all humans, so what do you expect.

However, a search of google patents revealed nothing, take that as you will.
 
They have patented the use of certain LED technology positioned in certain places on the space shuttle and on TOILET SEATS.

That's just weird.

Yes, their patents seem to general, and if I remember directly, you (or one of your employees or someone who you bought the idea from) had to invent the item in question - it seems that High End has some previous patents on color-changing fixtures.
 
There are some surprisingly broad and apparently obvious patents being granted these days. I've dealt with this enough to know that you have to actually examine the claims in each patent to see what it really covers, however. To perform patent searches in the US, you can use this link:

http://www.uspto.gov/

A quick search reveals 53 issued patents assigned to Color Kinetics.
 
Most patent language that I’ve ever seen is so specific that it takes paragraphs (pages even), not a sentence, to describe (Just open and read a few that cutlunch posted). (Or you can take a sentence or two out of context of the patent, the patent title, or the patent abstract, and get something that sounds absurd.) On the other hand, judging by a quick look of the all the patents that Color Kinetics appears to have (at their website, which includes a description of one of their projects for the German Patent Office) (not to mention the article that cutlunch posted), I can see why one would make a satirical remark about what Color Kinetics has patented.

Joe
 
Looks like another good reason to buy Selador... besides the fact that it's a superior product... and you better buy quick before Color Kinetics sues them out of business too. I just hate this kind of business practice. Think of all the years of innovation intelligent lighting lost due to all the lawsuits, and here we go again.

Just make a superior product and people will buy it.
 
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I almost didn't believe the toilet seat when I saw it - but it's one of a dozen or two things that they've patented to have their stuff on it...
 
this is what happens when you have a legal department that is bored. Sure you can get these patents etc, but in most cases they are not worth the paper they are printed on. Companies do it because many times a tech company needs a set of patents that they can trade on cross licensing agreements. All a bit weird, all designed to make the lawyers rich.

Sharyn
 
I've Noticed, However, That none of you has addressed my Patent on Oxygen ! I've got you Runing Scared ! Oh yeah enjoy those last free moments of breath. I've already started counting the royalties. China is going to owe me big !

Oh and BTW, Len , PblPblPbl < that's a raspberry. >

:mrgreen:
 
I've Noticed, However, That none of you has addressed my Patent on Oxygen ! I've got you Runing Scared ! Oh yeah enjoy those last free moments of breath. I've already started counting the royalties. China is going to owe me big !
Oh and BTW, Len , PblPblPbl < that's a raspberry. >
:mrgreen:

Van your Avatar is getting more appropriate by the minute.
 
I have held a patent on the entire periodic table for many years. Van, you'll be hearing from my lawyers soon.
 
I've had major issues with Color Kinetics for a while. They have, in my opinion, held LED technology hostage in the US for some time now. Chris Ewington @ ipix has been attempting for some time to sell his Satellite LED in the US, but refuses to pay the ransom CK wants to charge. The Satellite would sell for approx $950us without the CK licensing.

If they had truly invented something remarkable I'd support them, but I wholly disagree with their business ethic. In one patent, as I understand it, they invented nothing, but got a process patent for using DMX to control an LED instrument. When I quickly read thru the patent last year that's pretty much what it did appear to come down to and thats why every LED instrument sold in the US has to pay them ransom. What remains to be seen is if ACN will allow us to all get out from under the Color Kinetics feifdom.
 
what is the Satellite LED thing you are talking about it, I can't seem to find it on google.
 
believe "Happy Birthday" song was and is of pattent (something like that), or was that some similar song.

Martin/VaraLite/High End verses Color Kinetics and various other brands. Pattent rights and technology don't always get along. Intellectulal property when it's an in-common problem thus solution and or something that becomes so base that it solves problems and short of paying someone for the rights tends to stand in the way of advancement. This granted that some of the copying that goes on in China these days is more reverse engineering and re-production cheaper of the exact same product, at some point the tech details of pattents get expensive and important only to the lawyers.

Remember at one point Martin lost a law suite and were for a time no longer allowed to sell their product in the US. On another post, I remember hearing something about Altman having to pay $6.00 for each Shakesphere produced to ETC... to which I don't doubt as possible and or as something I believe I have heard before as possible confirmed or not. Given lawsuites, It's not hard to believe that Altman would have to give ETC money for each fixture they produce even if totally different fixture on most all ways.

At some point say 20 years from now, I would hope that lawyers play less a role in what we pay in costs for the equipment we buy, and there might be some intellectulal property revisions by way of base idea say verses how specifically it's done. This given I'm not taking sides in what any number of lawsuites of the past have lead to - all no doubt haver merits. LED technology is new and hip, what develops is under study all around. Litegating only makes lawyers money in the end. Like a stream of water, it's hard to dam it up properly without allowing it to flow naturally in where it wants to go.

From what I understand about the Phillips GLA/GLC lamp, it once was available with a removable heat sink that allowed it to go into a ETC fixture. Even still have some in stock and they work. Different filament but the concept by way of Phillips, was a universal lamp - now how cool would that be in having a lamp that would fit both one's older say 360Q's and S-4's? It really is the same base of lamp other than filament type and heat sink... None the less, Phillips had to pull this product from the market and buy the rights to produce the HPL line of lamp ETC owns the rights to. As opposed to all ANSI lamps (HPL types are not ANSI lamps), ETC owns the rights to the design of all lamps that fit into their fixtures.

I surmise because of this, there as above is no universial removable heat sink HPL lamps on the market that in using the refined filament of a HPL can work where a GLC might have wanted to work. Had ETC wished the above Phillips lamp to stay on the market and open up a universal lamp, they will have, but than again they would no longer control the pattent to that lamp.

One will note however how old the HPL lamp is without an upgrade. The HPR lamp is an upgrade in some ways to the HX-600/FLK or GLC. Osram either cannot upgrade the HPL to a reflector version of it due to as they said a more complex filament, or due to litegation problems with ETC - I do not know for sure. This is all some concepts where copywrite is at very least standing in the way of further development - by way of the universal lamp again that will fit in all types of Leko, or the internal reflector - very simple technology that to this date years later is still yet to be seen in a HPL lamp. What's another 15 to 20% more efficient beam of light anyway? ETC does not have copywrite to it nor would thus it gets complex. What's a universal lamp, Phillips had to at some point stop producing this universal lamp and buy the rights to produce the HPL lamps - and boy were they pissed when they found out that Ushio and Osram were doing ceramic sinks about the time they were just introducing their version of aluminum ones. (Not that any one is better than another in reality.) Anyway... copywrite stuff. Useful, but in some ways it's in the way of real advances based upon such technology.

My opinion at least - copywrite laws need more refinement to keep up with modern tecnnology. This much less I'm sure that VeriLite persay has much less an intellectural problem with Martin developing similar technology than some company in China making an exact copy of a fixture. AT least at the component level for the Martin type thing, it's a base of how it works concept but different fixture after that, as opposed to cheaper cloan that's 100% reverse engineered and copied. Chevy learns from Ford, Ford later learns from Chevy. My opinion at least - given if proven copy, I don't have a problem with the above $6.00 per fixture cost of copied technology, just wish it did not also come with say a $10.00 also added cost that comes from the lawyer bill for such a lawsuite.
 

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