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So what I don't get, is there's no shortage of jurisdictions where intellectual property doesn't seem to be worth the paper it's printed on, and really convinci

So what I don't get, is there's no shortage of jurisdictions where intellectual property doesn't seem to be worth the paper it's printed on, and really convincing counterfeits flood some well-known markets. Where are the e-ink knockoffs? What sort of enforcement are these folks doing that nobody else seems to be able to?

freeqaz 6y ago
They apparently buy up any competition to keep the market small. There have been other similar tech promised by startups but they buy them up. Pretty interesting! Infuriating too, of course. But the system is what it is. I'm surprised they can't make more money by cross licensing the tech and just granting royalties. I'm no economics expert though.
- ThrowawayR2 6y ago
  > "They apparently buy up any competition to keep the market small." Which companies / patents did they buy up? I keep seeing this rumor floating around but their Wikipedia article lists exactly one acquisition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink#Acquisition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink#Acquisition) and a casual Google doesn't show any others.
derekp7 6y ago
The truth is that most real consumers (as apposed to us technologists) don't want e-ink technology. It is monochrome, can't do video, limited interactive due to refresh rate and ghosting... the only real thing it has going for it is low power usage. And that pairs well with applications where you spend a long time staring at the screen, and periodically initiating a compute burst to change the screen contents. In other words, e-readers and note-taking devices. And consumers are fairly satisfied with devices that get charged once every day, and can take a 15 minute quick-charge to add multiple hours of additional usage to them.
- fortran77 6y ago
  The "Patents are Bad!" trope always comes up in any e-ink thread. Not sure why. I love e-ink (I prefer to read books on a kindle), but I think if the demand were there the prices would come down, as you pointed out.
  - coldtea 6y ago
    Demand doesn't bring prices down. Or not much anyway. Everybody would like a Ferrari/Rolex/etc., but they don't get cheaper because of it. In fact, high demand combined with a monopoly means you don't need to lower prices at all. (You lower price to raise demand, but you don't need to if you have strong demand at your current prices). Competition does lower prices. And with patents competition is impossible. As if for a competitor to make improvements to the process/technology, while still using parts of it (they would still infringe).
    - robinsoh 6y ago
      > Demand doesn't bring prices down. Or not much anyway. In my experience in the display industry, the main driver of price is cost and the main driver of cost is volume. If a customer puts in a signed escrowed order for a million displays lilke what Apple did, then processes get scaled, factories get built, and per-unit prices go down. That my understanding of how 6" matrix E-Ink displays went from costing thousands of dollars per display when they were being built in low volumes of hundreds of displays to costing sub-50 when they were being built for Sony, Amazon and others in volumes of hundreds of thousands of displays. The same is true of the LCD industry and the OLED industry. The same is true of the cellphone industry. > And with patents competition is impossible I can't understand what exactly you're talking about. Is this the E-Ink-is-expensive-because-of-patents trope? I've asked before whenever I see this trope on HN, what specific patent are you referring to? Patent thicket? This extraordinary claim requires evidence. I go to SID, never heard anyone claiming this kind of stuff. Tonnes of competition but physics, featureset, costs, volume, customer demand gets in the way. It is why even well funded companies like Liquavista-Amazon and Mirasol-Qualcom didn't make it.

freeqaz 6y ago

They apparently buy up any competition to keep the market small. There have been other similar tech promised by startups but they buy them up. Pretty interesting! Infuriating too, of course. But the system is what it is. I'm surprised they can't make more money by cross licensing the tech and just granting royalties. I'm no economics expert though.

ThrowawayR2 6y ago
> "They apparently buy up any competition to keep the market small." Which companies / patents did they buy up? I keep seeing this rumor floating around but their Wikipedia article lists exactly one acquisition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink#Acquisition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Ink#Acquisition) and a casual Google doesn't show any others.

derekp7 6y ago

The truth is that most real consumers (as apposed to us technologists) don't want e-ink technology. It is monochrome, can't do video, limited interactive due to refresh rate and ghosting... the only real thing it has going for it is low power usage. And that pairs well with applications where you spend a long time staring at the screen, and periodically initiating a compute burst to change the screen contents. In other words, e-readers and note-taking devices. And consumers are fairly satisfied with devices that get charged once every day, and can take a 15 minute quick-charge to add multiple hours of additional usage to them.

fortran77 6y ago
The "Patents are Bad!" trope always comes up in any e-ink thread. Not sure why. I love e-ink (I prefer to read books on a kindle), but I think if the demand were there the prices would come down, as you pointed out.
- coldtea 6y ago
  Demand doesn't bring prices down. Or not much anyway. Everybody would like a Ferrari/Rolex/etc., but they don't get cheaper because of it. In fact, high demand combined with a monopoly means you don't need to lower prices at all. (You lower price to raise demand, but you don't need to if you have strong demand at your current prices). Competition does lower prices. And with patents competition is impossible. As if for a competitor to make improvements to the process/technology, while still using parts of it (they would still infringe).
  - robinsoh 6y ago
    > Demand doesn't bring prices down. Or not much anyway. In my experience in the display industry, the main driver of price is cost and the main driver of cost is volume. If a customer puts in a signed escrowed order for a million displays lilke what Apple did, then processes get scaled, factories get built, and per-unit prices go down. That my understanding of how 6" matrix E-Ink displays went from costing thousands of dollars per display when they were being built in low volumes of hundreds of displays to costing sub-50 when they were being built for Sony, Amazon and others in volumes of hundreds of thousands of displays. The same is true of the LCD industry and the OLED industry. The same is true of the cellphone industry. > And with patents competition is impossible I can't understand what exactly you're talking about. Is this the E-Ink-is-expensive-because-of-patents trope? I've asked before whenever I see this trope on HN, what specific patent are you referring to? Patent thicket? This extraordinary claim requires evidence. I go to SID, never heard anyone claiming this kind of stuff. Tonnes of competition but physics, featureset, costs, volume, customer demand gets in the way. It is why even well funded companies like Liquavista-Amazon and Mirasol-Qualcom didn't make it.