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The waveforms will all likely be disclosed in their patents too: https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Cor
by sofon 8y ago
The waveforms will all likely be disclosed in their patents too:
https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp https://patents.google.com/?assignee=E+Ink+Corp
Certainly a number of drive waveforms and the basic concepts are presented. There are likely implementation subtleties or specific configurations that are not explicitly disclosed.
You can probably figure out a lot about both the implementation, and motivation by digging through the patents.
- amelius 8y agoYes, it would be quite stupid to guard the secret and not patent it. So the title of the article doesn't make much sense.
- wingspar 8y agoThat’s done all the time. Called a trade secret. https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret
- amelius 8y agoAs others said, it's quite easy to measure these waveforms, and they have a patent. So "closely guarded secret" just doesn't make sense in this case.
- antt 8y agoA trade secret that can be reverse engineered by a tinkerer with an oscilloscope in an afternoon. This is more or less the type of situation patents were invented for: a simple invention anyone can copy once it's invented, but difficult (I assume) to invent in the first place.
- kosievdmerwe 8y agoOr expensive to invent. It's why I don't like most software patents, but why I think codecs, especially the modern ones, should be patentable. They're complicated engineering challenges requiring you to make numerous tradeoffs and I feel that just because the result is an algorithm doesn't mean that it shouldn't be patentable. Other software patents I'm more dubious of, but I feel comfortable saying H.264 should be patentable.
- amelius 8y agoTotally agree. However in many cases, the main technology is invented at universities with public funding. Also, codecs are a means of communication, and I don't think it should be patentable because it can cause problems once everybody settles on a single standard. See the MPEG nightmare, where professional cameras have a license attached to any movie shot with them.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- 1ris 8y agoSecrecy and patents are mutually exclusive. The deal you get with the patent is you disclose you invention so secrecy doesn't hinder progress too much and in exchange you get exclusivity.
- lozaning 8y agoThere is a reason that Coke hasnt patented the Coke formula.
- 1ris 8y agoYou can patent ideas. Parameter sets are not ideas.
- URSpider94 8y agoThe patents disclose general categories of waveforms, but they leave out key details of exactly how the final results are achieved. Thus, the final waveform Performance is a combination of patent and trade secret. Additionally, as others have posted, the waveforms vary for different panels, due to manufacturing variation, so reversing a single example won’t tell you much about how to drive a different panel.