>There the manufacturers were stealing each other's ideas "within months" as Japan had no enforceable Western style patent system yet. The electric andon was fo

>There the manufacturers were stealing each other's ideas "within months" as Japan had no enforceable Western style patent system yet. The electric andon was for example copied from Suzuki looms, where it prevented looms from dethreading when the machine runs out of thread, and requiring hours to manually rethread it again. How horrible! I’m glad the patent system saved us from this backwardness!