11 ms·

Here is what will happen with this technology... nothing. The company is an IP play where they have locked up this concept in IP and will try and force it on ju

Here is what will happen with this technology... nothing. The company is an IP play where they have locked up this concept in IP and will try and force it on jurisdictions by various means of legislation to ensure they can get the highest prices possible for said IP. Incumbents will resist choosing to continue with current public domain technology. In 30 years when the IP expires it might possibly come into more common use. The current IP regimes are a complete disaster and are hamstringing human progress. PS: Also scroll compressors are substantially more energy efficient than rotary and various means of staging is even more efficient yet.

joshuaissac 5y ago
> will try and force it on jurisdictions by various means of legislation Have they said this is their strategy? There are IP licensors (like ARM and the Fraunhofer Society) that sell licences to their IP without trying to force jurisdictions to adopt their technology. > Incumbents will resist choosing to continue with current public domain technology This would depend on the pricing of the IP licences and the competition within the market. If the licences are cheap enough and the market competitive enough that using this tech would provide an advantage, then incumbents would license it.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  ARM sells... "intellectual property" that I might try to come up with a distinguishing definition from the IP of "one clever idea I want a monopoly on for a while". A lot of IP boils down to an idea that you could describe in an elevator and a few good engineers could turn into a product in a few hours to a year. ARM sells things that represent... thousands? hundreds of thousands? of engineer-years. You can't just whip that up in a short time, it totally makes sense to pay someone else for their trouble to make something... but if you wanted to and had a billion dollars to spare, sure you could do it yourself. The problem with "I thought of it first" IP protections is the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery. A whole lot of ideas just have their time come, and tend to have multiple people working on them and coming to similar results in short periods. Making this a race and letting the winner sell out to groups that either want to extract rent out of the idea or to hide it in a safe to prevent competition for 30 years is not conducive to progress.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I patented a couple things just for the lulz, but in general I'm opposed to patents. I should have patented a couple others just because I kind of resent others claiming they invented it years later. But I can't complain too much, as I've also invented things that I later discovered I was late to the party.
    - c_o_n_v_e_x 5y ago
      Were you ever approached to have your lulz patents licensed?
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        The people who paid for all the patent paperwork owned the patents, and they licensed them, but I don't think anything ever came of them. One was a method of texting that didn't require looking at the phone, the other was a way to display lo-res graphics data without pixelation.
        TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > One was a method of texting that didn't require looking at the phone Oh that's easy, every phone before iPhone could do it - you need a) a physical keyboard, and b) a soft real-time OS. Tactile feedback of physical buttons + stable UI configuration with learnable delays = you could learn to operate the phone without taking it out of your pocket. :) Joking aside, what was your invention? Could you link to the patent?
        WalterBright 5y ago
        Patent 7831208 Wireless mobile phone having encoded data entry facilities Patent 7812993 Lossy method for compressing images and video Patent 7711748 Method and apparatus for simplified access to online services Patent 7028033 Method and apparatus for simplified access to online services Patent 6897977 Lossy method for compressing pictures and video Patent 6850782 Wireless device with vibrational communication capabilities Patent 6657647 Controlling the order in which content is displayed in a browser Patent 6418323 Wireless mobile phone with Morse code and related capabilities AFAIK, none of these have been made use of. Though every time I see banding and blockiness in video, I think "they should implement triangles!"
ajross 5y ago
> PS: Also scroll compressors are substantially more energy efficient than rotary and various means of staging is even more efficient yet. PPS: Also the efficiency of a heat exchanger cycle has very little to do with the individual losses of the compressor components. Engine losses matter at the compression ratios you see in a combustion piston, but at the scale coolants run at (especially ones like in an AC that involve a phase change) it's almost noise when compared with the fundamental thermodynamic limitations. You can do a little better for sure; 33% lower friction losses seems reasonable. But you can't do much better: the linked article is surely not talking about 33% better overall cooling efficiency, that sounds insane to me.
- rainbowzootsuit 5y ago
  I agree about the 33% efficiency doesn't make any sense from a thermodynamic perspective. The discussion of the peak current for the compressor motor is quite strange. That is a fraction of a second that the system experience the Locked Rotor Amps (LRA). It is also solvable when a system has variable compressors or inrush current limiting. One bit of reasonable efficiency gains to be had is by switching refrigerants to an R22 analogue. R22 is banned per the Montreal Protocol as of 2020. However, R22 has thermodynamic properties that make it more efficient than the standard refrigerant of today's residential and small commercial units, R410A. This is particularly as the heat of the atmosphere being rejected into rises with some Coefficient Of Performance (COP) differences in the 10% range. https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=860880 https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=86088... There are some analogues to R22 without the ozone damaging properties that share or exceed the the thermodynamic performance of R22. R407C is one that comes to mind, but there's a handful that can be retrofitted or purchased new. However, a trade off is that generally a newer Energy Star unit will be significantly more efficient than an older R22 unit. My point with the R22 is that the industry will slowly move towards some of these other refrigerants because of their better thermodynamics.
michaelcampbell 5y ago
SawStop tried this with table saws. Put such a bad taste in my mouth that I will never buy one.
- bsder 5y ago
  Are you sure that isn't saw manufacturer propaganda? I thought the issue with SawStop wasn't that the licensing was bad but that nobody was willing to take on the liability. ie. If someone cut off their hand with a table saw, it was settled law that it was their own fault. If someone cut off their hand and the SawStop didn't fire, the manufacturer now had a gigantic liability.
  - frosted-flakes 5y ago
    SawStop is or was trying to get the government to ban the sale of saws without flesh detection technology. Guess who holds the patents for said technology? Bosch came out with a superior design that doesn't use a brake at all, but were barred from selling it in the US because it infringed SawStop's patents.
    - bsder 5y ago
      > SawStop is or was trying to get the government to ban the sale of saws without flesh detection technology. Yeah, that's bad. When you resort to lobbying, you're no longer on the good side of the ledger.
      - slownews45 5y ago
        Tell that to the kids whose hands are saved. https://www.swnewsmedia.com/shakopee_valley_news/news/education/these-saws-are-saving-one-finger-at-a-time-at-shakopee-west-middle-school/article_dc03d99b-e265-50b3-82e5-58aefa9398b5.html https://www.swnewsmedia.com/shakopee_valley_news/news/educat...
        bsder 5y ago
beambot 5y ago
The federal government can and should suspend patent coverage for key climate-related innovations -- just like what was done for COVID vaccines.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Or it could just buy those patents, using eminent domain powers.
  - vxNsr 5y ago
    Using eminent domain still requires paying close to fair market value… determining that will find quite a few lawyers’ French chateaus.
- beervirus 5y ago
  Yes, removing the profit motive will surely incentivize such inventions!
  - beambot 5y ago
    I have two dozen patents to my name and know dozens of others who hold as many or more than I do. I also know just as many successful entrepreneurs. Not one had ever said "I would commercialize <x>, but for the patents", nor have any said "I would stop doing innovation if patents ceased to exist". I concede that there are some field where it might make sense (eg pharmacology), but most of the time, patents are a tax -- hugely expensive for small innovators and weaponized by mega-corps. Further, in times of crisis (eg COVID or war with radar), patents are suspended for certain topics to promote speed of execution. We are at that point for climate change & energy efficiency.
    - hellbannedguy 5y ago
      There are a lot of inventors out there who can afford the fees. I would love to see patent fees based on income level, and the more you get; the more they cost.
aetherspawn 5y ago
Mitsubishi already have a (relatively) low-cost scroll compressor for air conditioning applications that works very well.
mech422 5y ago
My dad was making circular screw compressors back in the 70s and 80s... I would think most of this stuff would have prior art...
c_o_n_v_e_x 5y ago
Vapor compression is a technology ripe for disruption. I reckon the IP holder knows this and is trying to monetize this while they can. I think tech based on magnetocaloric cooling is one option. There was a company I was following a years ago (I've since forgotten the name) that was researching advanced thermoelectric cooling technologies that would be offer much better performance than peltiers.
robinsoh 5y ago
> Incumbents will resist choosing to continue with current public domain technology. In 30 years when the IP expires it might possibly come into more common use. The current IP regimes are a complete disaster and are hamstringing human progress. I am curious. What explains the success of Microsoft Windows as the dominant "technology" for PCs and laptops? That's not due to "intellectual protection rights" is it? I am not a software engineer, just a display engineer, would I be correct if I alleged that "IP regimes" are hamstringing operating system progress? My gut instinct is no, that would be an absurd claim. Perhaps equivalent to me claiming that "IP regimes" are hamstringing search engine progress? I am genuinely interested to find out what people think about this.
- kragen 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... Yes, IP regimes are definitely hamstringing operating system progress. https://en.swpat.org/wiki/NetApp%27s_filesystem_patents https://en.swpat.org/wiki/NetApp%27s_filesystem_patents goes into some details about why Linux doesn't have automatic transparent instantaneous backups like the NetApp fileserver I was using a quarter century ago.
nuccy 5y ago
This technology (the idea of linear compressor directly driven by a coil) is used for at least two decades, particularly in LG compressors in AC and refrigerators [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_compressor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_compressor
BulgarianIdiot 5y ago
Your hypothetical scenario requires everyone being irrational. The company probably doesn't want to sit on their IP for 30 years and not yield any profit. How does that benefit them. They'll try to bend some arms, and if this fails, they're most likely to drop licensing prices until they meet market demand. And yes, there's demand for efficient AC. I mean, come on.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
xyzzy21 5y ago
Also the refrigerants matter - unfortunately, the MOST efficient ones also happen to be really bad for the ozone layer so they've been "banned" (there are still plenty of units out there using them - just can't use on new systems). So there's always a trade-off. You pay for this or you pay for that. And if its energy, you have to consider the material and energy supply chains or you are probably bullshitting people and yourself. Ultimately an air con is a heat engine so Carnot's law applies. No possible magic beyond what thermodynamics allows. ALL TOO MANY "inventions" summarily . You even have UC Berkeley getting into the con-game with the Water Seer (which claims violates thermodynamics). You'd THINK UCB wouldn't ever push physics-violating ideas but NOPE. A stain on the engineering school reputation!

joshuaissac 5y ago

> will try and force it on jurisdictions by various means of legislation Have they said this is their strategy? There are IP licensors (like ARM and the Fraunhofer Society) that sell licences to their IP without trying to force jurisdictions to adopt their technology. > Incumbents will resist choosing to continue with current public domain technology This would depend on the pricing of the IP licences and the competition within the market. If the licences are cheap enough and the market competitive enough that using this tech would provide an advantage, then incumbents would license it.

colechristensen 5y ago
ARM sells... "intellectual property" that I might try to come up with a distinguishing definition from the IP of "one clever idea I want a monopoly on for a while". A lot of IP boils down to an idea that you could describe in an elevator and a few good engineers could turn into a product in a few hours to a year. ARM sells things that represent... thousands? hundreds of thousands? of engineer-years. You can't just whip that up in a short time, it totally makes sense to pay someone else for their trouble to make something... but if you wanted to and had a billion dollars to spare, sure you could do it yourself. The problem with "I thought of it first" IP protections is the phenomenon of simultaneous discovery. A whole lot of ideas just have their time come, and tend to have multiple people working on them and coming to similar results in short periods. Making this a race and letting the winner sell out to groups that either want to extract rent out of the idea or to hide it in a safe to prevent competition for 30 years is not conducive to progress.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I patented a couple things just for the lulz, but in general I'm opposed to patents. I should have patented a couple others just because I kind of resent others claiming they invented it years later. But I can't complain too much, as I've also invented things that I later discovered I was late to the party.
  - c_o_n_v_e_x 5y ago
    Were you ever approached to have your lulz patents licensed?
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      The people who paid for all the patent paperwork owned the patents, and they licensed them, but I don't think anything ever came of them. One was a method of texting that didn't require looking at the phone, the other was a way to display lo-res graphics data without pixelation.
      - TeMPOraL 5y ago
        > One was a method of texting that didn't require looking at the phone Oh that's easy, every phone before iPhone could do it - you need a) a physical keyboard, and b) a soft real-time OS. Tactile feedback of physical buttons + stable UI configuration with learnable delays = you could learn to operate the phone without taking it out of your pocket. :) Joking aside, what was your invention? Could you link to the patent?
        WalterBright 5y ago
        Patent 7831208 Wireless mobile phone having encoded data entry facilities Patent 7812993 Lossy method for compressing images and video Patent 7711748 Method and apparatus for simplified access to online services Patent 7028033 Method and apparatus for simplified access to online services Patent 6897977 Lossy method for compressing pictures and video Patent 6850782 Wireless device with vibrational communication capabilities Patent 6657647 Controlling the order in which content is displayed in a browser Patent 6418323 Wireless mobile phone with Morse code and related capabilities AFAIK, none of these have been made use of. Though every time I see banding and blockiness in video, I think "they should implement triangles!"

ajross 5y ago

> PS: Also scroll compressors are substantially more energy efficient than rotary and various means of staging is even more efficient yet. PPS: Also the efficiency of a heat exchanger cycle has very little to do with the individual losses of the compressor components. Engine losses matter at the compression ratios you see in a combustion piston, but at the scale coolants run at (especially ones like in an AC that involve a phase change) it's almost noise when compared with the fundamental thermodynamic limitations. You can do a little better for sure; 33% lower friction losses seems reasonable. But you can't do much better: the linked article is surely not talking about 33% better overall cooling efficiency, that sounds insane to me.

rainbowzootsuit 5y ago
I agree about the 33% efficiency doesn't make any sense from a thermodynamic perspective. The discussion of the peak current for the compressor motor is quite strange. That is a fraction of a second that the system experience the Locked Rotor Amps (LRA). It is also solvable when a system has variable compressors or inrush current limiting. One bit of reasonable efficiency gains to be had is by switching refrigerants to an R22 analogue. R22 is banned per the Montreal Protocol as of 2020. However, R22 has thermodynamic properties that make it more efficient than the standard refrigerant of today's residential and small commercial units, R410A. This is particularly as the heat of the atmosphere being rejected into rises with some Coefficient Of Performance (COP) differences in the 10% range. https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=860880 https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=86088... There are some analogues to R22 without the ozone damaging properties that share or exceed the the thermodynamic performance of R22. R407C is one that comes to mind, but there's a handful that can be retrofitted or purchased new. However, a trade off is that generally a newer Energy Star unit will be significantly more efficient than an older R22 unit. My point with the R22 is that the industry will slowly move towards some of these other refrigerants because of their better thermodynamics.

michaelcampbell 5y ago

SawStop tried this with table saws. Put such a bad taste in my mouth that I will never buy one.

bsder 5y ago
Are you sure that isn't saw manufacturer propaganda? I thought the issue with SawStop wasn't that the licensing was bad but that nobody was willing to take on the liability. ie. If someone cut off their hand with a table saw, it was settled law that it was their own fault. If someone cut off their hand and the SawStop didn't fire, the manufacturer now had a gigantic liability.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  SawStop is or was trying to get the government to ban the sale of saws without flesh detection technology. Guess who holds the patents for said technology? Bosch came out with a superior design that doesn't use a brake at all, but were barred from selling it in the US because it infringed SawStop's patents.
  - bsder 5y ago
    > SawStop is or was trying to get the government to ban the sale of saws without flesh detection technology. Yeah, that's bad. When you resort to lobbying, you're no longer on the good side of the ledger.
    - slownews45 5y ago
      Tell that to the kids whose hands are saved. https://www.swnewsmedia.com/shakopee_valley_news/news/education/these-saws-are-saving-one-finger-at-a-time-at-shakopee-west-middle-school/article_dc03d99b-e265-50b3-82e5-58aefa9398b5.html https://www.swnewsmedia.com/shakopee_valley_news/news/educat...
      - bsder 5y ago

beambot 5y ago

The federal government can and should suspend patent coverage for key climate-related innovations -- just like what was done for COVID vaccines.

WalterBright 5y ago
Or it could just buy those patents, using eminent domain powers.
- vxNsr 5y ago
  Using eminent domain still requires paying close to fair market value… determining that will find quite a few lawyers’ French chateaus.
beervirus 5y ago
Yes, removing the profit motive will surely incentivize such inventions!
- beambot 5y ago
  I have two dozen patents to my name and know dozens of others who hold as many or more than I do. I also know just as many successful entrepreneurs. Not one had ever said "I would commercialize <x>, but for the patents", nor have any said "I would stop doing innovation if patents ceased to exist". I concede that there are some field where it might make sense (eg pharmacology), but most of the time, patents are a tax -- hugely expensive for small innovators and weaponized by mega-corps. Further, in times of crisis (eg COVID or war with radar), patents are suspended for certain topics to promote speed of execution. We are at that point for climate change & energy efficiency.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    There are a lot of inventors out there who can afford the fees. I would love to see patent fees based on income level, and the more you get; the more they cost.

aetherspawn 5y ago

Mitsubishi already have a (relatively) low-cost scroll compressor for air conditioning applications that works very well.

mech422 5y ago

My dad was making circular screw compressors back in the 70s and 80s... I would think most of this stuff would have prior art...

c_o_n_v_e_x 5y ago

Vapor compression is a technology ripe for disruption. I reckon the IP holder knows this and is trying to monetize this while they can. I think tech based on magnetocaloric cooling is one option. There was a company I was following a years ago (I've since forgotten the name) that was researching advanced thermoelectric cooling technologies that would be offer much better performance than peltiers.

robinsoh 5y ago

> Incumbents will resist choosing to continue with current public domain technology. In 30 years when the IP expires it might possibly come into more common use. The current IP regimes are a complete disaster and are hamstringing human progress. I am curious. What explains the success of Microsoft Windows as the dominant "technology" for PCs and laptops? That's not due to "intellectual protection rights" is it? I am not a software engineer, just a display engineer, would I be correct if I alleged that "IP regimes" are hamstringing operating system progress? My gut instinct is no, that would be an absurd claim. Perhaps equivalent to me claiming that "IP regimes" are hamstringing search engine progress? I am genuinely interested to find out what people think about this.

kragen 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor.... Yes, IP regimes are definitely hamstringing operating system progress. https://en.swpat.org/wiki/NetApp%27s_filesystem_patents https://en.swpat.org/wiki/NetApp%27s_filesystem_patents goes into some details about why Linux doesn't have automatic transparent instantaneous backups like the NetApp fileserver I was using a quarter century ago.

nuccy 5y ago

This technology (the idea of linear compressor directly driven by a coil) is used for at least two decades, particularly in LG compressors in AC and refrigerators [1]. 1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_compressor https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_compressor

BulgarianIdiot 5y ago

Your hypothetical scenario requires everyone being irrational. The company probably doesn't want to sit on their IP for 30 years and not yield any profit. How does that benefit them. They'll try to bend some arms, and if this fails, they're most likely to drop licensing prices until they meet market demand. And yes, there's demand for efficient AC. I mean, come on.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

xyzzy21 5y ago

Also the refrigerants matter - unfortunately, the MOST efficient ones also happen to be really bad for the ozone layer so they've been "banned" (there are still plenty of units out there using them - just can't use on new systems). So there's always a trade-off. You pay for this or you pay for that. And if its energy, you have to consider the material and energy supply chains or you are probably bullshitting people and yourself. Ultimately an air con is a heat engine so Carnot's law applies. No possible magic beyond what thermodynamics allows. ALL TOO MANY "inventions" summarily . You even have UC Berkeley getting into the con-game with the Water Seer (which claims violates thermodynamics). You'd THINK UCB wouldn't ever push physics-violating ideas but NOPE. A stain on the engineering school reputation!