9 ms·

Oh boy, another awesome e-Ink design we'll never actually see due to eInk's bullshit monopoly practices

by tomc1985 6y ago

Krasnol 6y ago
Can you elaborate on this?
- linux2647 6y ago
  From my understanding, they hold a large number of epaper patents and have made it difficult for other manufacturers to produce similar panels. EInk then also sets high prices their own panels, making it expensive for manufacturers to source EInk panels
- tomc1985 6y ago
  There was a comment by a throwaway account on a recent HN article about e-Ink displays that describes how e-Ink company monopolizes its contribution to epaper device BOMs and how difficult it was to actually integrate their parts. I'm having difficulty finding it but it was posted in the last few days.
  - sturadnidge 6y ago
    I believe it was this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779
    - tomc1985 6y ago
      yup
habitue 6y ago
Just to clarify, if you have a problem with what eInk is doing here, then you basically have a problem with patents altogether. This is essentially the prototypical case for patents: * Invented a novel, physical device[1] * Granted monopoly from the government for 20 years to extract monopoly rent from sale of the product in exchange for making the design publicly available Now, personally, I bite the bullet here and say "maybe we should come up with a better incentive system than patents". But I find it hard to fault eInk specifically since this is exactly how patents are supposed to work. [1] I mention it's a physical device because there are other more controversial types of patents like software patents and patents on genes which are more widely understood to be bullshit.
- spijdar 6y ago
  Maybe it's how it's "supposed" to work in principle and by the books they're doing something wrong, but on the other hand, have why haven't other patented technologies ended up in such a limbo state? Lots of tech has been patented, some by ruthless and litigious companies like Apple, and yet somehow there don't seem to be that many broad technologies like electrophoretic displays that have ended up like eInk products. What makes these displays so different? (Edit: to be clear, I don't mean to sound snarky or rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious since these displays seem to be in a pretty unique situation)
  - adwf 6y ago
    It does happen to other products. Notably 3D printing was held up by a 1989 patent for 20 years - when it expired in 2009 it resulted in a massive boom leading to lots of new innovations in the space.
- _ph_ 6y ago
  I am not sure that is how patents are supposed to work. Few people would object to eInk getting profits from their inventions. But the problem seems to be the strange ways eInk markets their products. It seems to be that they are not encouraging more companies to use their products an rather hold back their technology. Patents were created as an incentive not only to do research but to publish the results of the research. So that many companies would have access to the technology and can license the patents when producing products based on that technology. That is not quite aligned with a company reluctantly marketing their technology.
  - mortenjorck 6y ago
    Indeed, I don't think it's hard to imagine an alternate timeline where E Ink simply negotiated royalties with a handful of manufacturers over the past 10-15 years and we saw an explosion of e-paper displays as OEMs iterated on E Ink's processes and experimented with more scalable, cost-effective variants. E Ink could have been the ARM of low-power display technology, raking in a billion dollars a year in royalties while the ecosystem flourished, but they couldn't let go of being the monopoly provider for their technology. What a waste.
mc32 6y ago
Does anyone know what happened to Qualcomm’s mirasol[1]Imod displays that were supposed to be e-ink like? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometric_modulator_display https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometric_modulator_di...
- est 6y ago
  > As of 2015, the IMOD Mirasol display laboratory in Longtan, Taiwan, formerly run by Qualcomm, is now apparently run by Apple I think they are mostly focused on Micro LED or Mini LED these days. Mirasol is abandoned.
AshamedCaptain 6y ago
I really don't understand why is it fashionable to claim this these days in these forums. I have no numbers for "eInk's bullshit monopoly practices". I see a lot of chinese manufacturers building eInk devices. No hint whatsoever of either abusive practices or abusive royalties. Does someone have any evidence? Most other competitors to eInk (e.g. Qualcomm/Mirasol, Gyricon, etc.) had viable products and have completely failed in the market. Is this really "einks abusive practices" or is it just complete consumer disinterest in the technology outside of these extremely niche markets?
- igorstellar 6y ago
  > I see a lot of chinese manufacturers building eInk devices. can you add some links to back up this claim? asking for a friend.
  - tazjin 6y ago
    They probably mean Dasung (http://www.dasungtech.com/ http://www.dasungtech.com/) and Onyx (https://www.boox.com/ https://www.boox.com/). The former actually build eInk computer monitors with HDMI inputs, but they're very expensive and somewhat difficult to buy.
  - AshamedCaptain 6y ago
    Just count the chinese manufacturers at https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_devices https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_devices . They're majority.
- cptskippy 6y ago
  E Ink is part of a consortium that owns all the patents around the technology used in their ePaper displays. The general consensus is that they are difficult to deal with and require numerous NDAs and licensing agreements to gain access to their technology. Nick Sheridon, inventor of the first ePaper display, suggested the watershed moment for ePaper would be in 2012 where it would gain mass adoption. It's been almost a decade and that watershed has yet to occur. Many believe that the difficulty in dealing with them and their licensing requirements are stifling the widespread adoption of the technology.
robomartin 6y ago
> due to eInk's bullshit monopoly practices A recurring meme from people who meet one or more of the following conditions: a) Don't understand business b) Don't know anything about the display industry c) Don't know anything about manufacturing anything at scale d) Don't have any real information other than repeating something someone said e) Never take the time to do enough research and gather enough data with which to support their opinions f) Don't seem to care about the truth As someone who worked in the display industry for over ten years, conducted seminars for thousands of engineers and business professionals on the design and manufacturing of display systems (down to pixel-level electronics) and, generally speaking, considered myself an expert in the domain...these kinds of comments come off as --to be kind-- terribly misplaced. It would behoove HN commenters to at least exercise enough restraint to only comment in domains they have either researched profusely or understand to a good level of proficiency. That is, if they care about HN signal-to-noise ratio not degrading to Twitter/FB food fight levels.
- rurounijones 6y ago
  I mean, you haven't actually provided any reasons backing up your case. The comment is pure ad hominem with a case of appealing to self-authority. Why hasn't E-Ink display tech gone mass-market? lots of other commenters are arguing the reasons for and against.
  - robinsoh 6y ago
    Allow me to try to explain his/her point. There's been a bunch of comments making really strong claims. Here's some examples just from this post. "They're famous for patent-trolling and disrupting anyone elses effort's to do anything with the tech". When asked for proof of this, there was no reply. "E Ink is part of a consortium that owns all the patents around the technology used in their ePaper displays." When asked for proof of this, there was no reply. "Because there's no real market, the only company "innovating" on the original technology is E-Ink. With a 20-year head start locking down iterative improvements, the technology may never get out of the tarpit. " When asked to back up the claim, at least the response was better in that they accepted it was an assumption based on other comments rather than actually being based on facts. " It is all just an assumption, and I don't have any evidence. Thank you for pointing that out, challenging me, and forcing me to take reconsider my opinion. " So his/her point is that people are alleging a company is a patent troll, even perhaps part of a consortium seeking to control the market and when challenged, they are unable to defend their claims. So your question appears to be asking him for reasons to backup his questioning of other people making claims. Eg, you are acting as Dan in the following itemized list. Alice: We are making a product at price X and volume Y with features Z Bob: Alice is preventing anyone else from making similar products using your patents. Alice is part of a consortium that is evil. A is making enormous profits. A is a patent troll. A is an example of patents gone wild. Charles: Uhm, Bob and buddies? Why are you saying that about Alice? I work in Alice's industry and see nothing like that. You guys shouldn't make such baseless comments as it brings down the quality of our technology forum and level of discussion. Dan: Charles, you're making ad-hominem attacks and appealing to self-authority. > Why hasn't E-Ink display tech gone mass-market? Because their technology (ie: the physics they're reliant on) can't do what competing products like LCD, OLED are able to do. You can't magically make electrophoretic particles that stay in a stable position AND move fast. You can't magically fit millions of color pigments in a pixel when there is NO backlight. Until they can switch to a different technology or physics, they can't compete against LCD/OLED and will never reach high enough volumes to scale to a lower cost structure.

Oh boy, another awesome e-Ink design we'll never actually see due to eInk's bullshit monopoly practices

Krasnol 6y ago

Can you elaborate on this?

linux2647 6y ago
From my understanding, they hold a large number of epaper patents and have made it difficult for other manufacturers to produce similar panels. EInk then also sets high prices their own panels, making it expensive for manufacturers to source EInk panels
tomc1985 6y ago
There was a comment by a throwaway account on a recent HN article about e-Ink displays that describes how e-Ink company monopolizes its contribution to epaper device BOMs and how difficult it was to actually integrate their parts. I'm having difficulty finding it but it was posted in the last few days.
- sturadnidge 6y ago
  I believe it was this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26143779
  - tomc1985 6y ago
    yup

habitue 6y ago

Just to clarify, if you have a problem with what eInk is doing here, then you basically have a problem with patents altogether. This is essentially the prototypical case for patents: * Invented a novel, physical device[1] * Granted monopoly from the government for 20 years to extract monopoly rent from sale of the product in exchange for making the design publicly available Now, personally, I bite the bullet here and say "maybe we should come up with a better incentive system than patents". But I find it hard to fault eInk specifically since this is exactly how patents are supposed to work. [1] I mention it's a physical device because there are other more controversial types of patents like software patents and patents on genes which are more widely understood to be bullshit.

spijdar 6y ago
Maybe it's how it's "supposed" to work in principle and by the books they're doing something wrong, but on the other hand, have why haven't other patented technologies ended up in such a limbo state? Lots of tech has been patented, some by ruthless and litigious companies like Apple, and yet somehow there don't seem to be that many broad technologies like electrophoretic displays that have ended up like eInk products. What makes these displays so different? (Edit: to be clear, I don't mean to sound snarky or rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious since these displays seem to be in a pretty unique situation)
- adwf 6y ago
  It does happen to other products. Notably 3D printing was held up by a 1989 patent for 20 years - when it expired in 2009 it resulted in a massive boom leading to lots of new innovations in the space.
_ph_ 6y ago
I am not sure that is how patents are supposed to work. Few people would object to eInk getting profits from their inventions. But the problem seems to be the strange ways eInk markets their products. It seems to be that they are not encouraging more companies to use their products an rather hold back their technology. Patents were created as an incentive not only to do research but to publish the results of the research. So that many companies would have access to the technology and can license the patents when producing products based on that technology. That is not quite aligned with a company reluctantly marketing their technology.
- mortenjorck 6y ago
  Indeed, I don't think it's hard to imagine an alternate timeline where E Ink simply negotiated royalties with a handful of manufacturers over the past 10-15 years and we saw an explosion of e-paper displays as OEMs iterated on E Ink's processes and experimented with more scalable, cost-effective variants. E Ink could have been the ARM of low-power display technology, raking in a billion dollars a year in royalties while the ecosystem flourished, but they couldn't let go of being the monopoly provider for their technology. What a waste.

mc32 6y ago

Does anyone know what happened to Qualcomm’s mirasol[1]Imod displays that were supposed to be e-ink like? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometric_modulator_display https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferometric_modulator_di...

est 6y ago
> As of 2015, the IMOD Mirasol display laboratory in Longtan, Taiwan, formerly run by Qualcomm, is now apparently run by Apple I think they are mostly focused on Micro LED or Mini LED these days. Mirasol is abandoned.

AshamedCaptain 6y ago

I really don't understand why is it fashionable to claim this these days in these forums. I have no numbers for "eInk's bullshit monopoly practices". I see a lot of chinese manufacturers building eInk devices. No hint whatsoever of either abusive practices or abusive royalties. Does someone have any evidence? Most other competitors to eInk (e.g. Qualcomm/Mirasol, Gyricon, etc.) had viable products and have completely failed in the market. Is this really "einks abusive practices" or is it just complete consumer disinterest in the technology outside of these extremely niche markets?

igorstellar 6y ago
> I see a lot of chinese manufacturers building eInk devices. can you add some links to back up this claim? asking for a friend.
- tazjin 6y ago
  They probably mean Dasung (http://www.dasungtech.com/ http://www.dasungtech.com/) and Onyx (https://www.boox.com/ https://www.boox.com/). The former actually build eInk computer monitors with HDMI inputs, but they're very expensive and somewhat difficult to buy.
- AshamedCaptain 6y ago
  Just count the chinese manufacturers at https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_devices https://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_devices . They're majority.
cptskippy 6y ago
E Ink is part of a consortium that owns all the patents around the technology used in their ePaper displays. The general consensus is that they are difficult to deal with and require numerous NDAs and licensing agreements to gain access to their technology. Nick Sheridon, inventor of the first ePaper display, suggested the watershed moment for ePaper would be in 2012 where it would gain mass adoption. It's been almost a decade and that watershed has yet to occur. Many believe that the difficulty in dealing with them and their licensing requirements are stifling the widespread adoption of the technology.

robomartin 6y ago

> due to eInk's bullshit monopoly practices A recurring meme from people who meet one or more of the following conditions: a) Don't understand business b) Don't know anything about the display industry c) Don't know anything about manufacturing anything at scale d) Don't have any real information other than repeating something someone said e) Never take the time to do enough research and gather enough data with which to support their opinions f) Don't seem to care about the truth As someone who worked in the display industry for over ten years, conducted seminars for thousands of engineers and business professionals on the design and manufacturing of display systems (down to pixel-level electronics) and, generally speaking, considered myself an expert in the domain...these kinds of comments come off as --to be kind-- terribly misplaced. It would behoove HN commenters to at least exercise enough restraint to only comment in domains they have either researched profusely or understand to a good level of proficiency. That is, if they care about HN signal-to-noise ratio not degrading to Twitter/FB food fight levels.

rurounijones 6y ago
I mean, you haven't actually provided any reasons backing up your case. The comment is pure ad hominem with a case of appealing to self-authority. Why hasn't E-Ink display tech gone mass-market? lots of other commenters are arguing the reasons for and against.
- robinsoh 6y ago
  Allow me to try to explain his/her point. There's been a bunch of comments making really strong claims. Here's some examples just from this post. "They're famous for patent-trolling and disrupting anyone elses effort's to do anything with the tech". When asked for proof of this, there was no reply. "E Ink is part of a consortium that owns all the patents around the technology used in their ePaper displays." When asked for proof of this, there was no reply. "Because there's no real market, the only company "innovating" on the original technology is E-Ink. With a 20-year head start locking down iterative improvements, the technology may never get out of the tarpit. " When asked to back up the claim, at least the response was better in that they accepted it was an assumption based on other comments rather than actually being based on facts. " It is all just an assumption, and I don't have any evidence. Thank you for pointing that out, challenging me, and forcing me to take reconsider my opinion. " So his/her point is that people are alleging a company is a patent troll, even perhaps part of a consortium seeking to control the market and when challenged, they are unable to defend their claims. So your question appears to be asking him for reasons to backup his questioning of other people making claims. Eg, you are acting as Dan in the following itemized list. Alice: We are making a product at price X and volume Y with features Z Bob: Alice is preventing anyone else from making similar products using your patents. Alice is part of a consortium that is evil. A is making enormous profits. A is a patent troll. A is an example of patents gone wild. Charles: Uhm, Bob and buddies? Why are you saying that about Alice? I work in Alice's industry and see nothing like that. You guys shouldn't make such baseless comments as it brings down the quality of our technology forum and level of discussion. Dan: Charles, you're making ad-hominem attacks and appealing to self-authority. > Why hasn't E-Ink display tech gone mass-market? Because their technology (ie: the physics they're reliant on) can't do what competing products like LCD, OLED are able to do. You can't magically make electrophoretic particles that stay in a stable position AND move fast. You can't magically fit millions of color pigments in a pixel when there is NO backlight. Until they can switch to a different technology or physics, they can't compete against LCD/OLED and will never reach high enough volumes to scale to a lower cost structure.