FYSETC patent activity

[LukeH]

I’m not an expert on Chinese IP law, but companies and individuals, such as LDO Motors are complaining publicly that FYSETC have filed patents on open source  technologies, including the Orbiter Extruder and the Voron Switchblade, and apparently trademarked the name “Voron”. Here is some of the data:

Obviously the intellectual property system is different in China to where I live. 

Does anybody have a clue what is going on?

[TobyCWood]

Got any other references to look at?

[Alan B]

I heard that Voron is moving to protect their names. Unfortunate they have to do that. From what I understand someone else in China would do it if Fysetc did not, so some other processes are necessary to protect it.

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[Luke Hartfiel]

There’s this

It’s in Chinese, but readable with Google Translate:

https://www.psych0h3ad.tech/entry/3Dprinter/trademarkandpatent/fystec

Apparently FYSTEC have trademarked the terms v-core, Ratrig, Duet Wi-Fi, to name a few, and patented other products including the Voron switch wire, Voron V0.1, orbiter and Sherpa extruders.

Plenty of discussion also on the orbiter extruder Facebook page (as you’d expect)

On 14 May 2022, at 2:11 pm, TobyCWood <andyc...@gmail.com> wrote:

Got any other references to look at?

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[Sam Matthews]

So, I'm a patent attorney but not an engineer, so this is just my take based on general patent principles. My initial take is that LDO Motors is complaining on Twitter without fully grasping exactly what's going on. This is based on a couple of things:

• I'm not certain all of those are actually patent applications. The first appear to be trademarks (?). If he can't tell the difference, then what else doesn't he understand about what's going on?
• On the Trademark side, I note that there's nothing prohibiting you from filing a trademark to something already disclosed. Trademarks aren't inventions, they're marks of the source a product/service came from. So there'd be nothing unusual about trademarking a name already in existence. Whether they're trying to register a trademark for someone else's product is a different question, but I'd expect the owners of the original mark to be on top of that and shut it down if were unauthorized.
• What matters in a patent is not the text in the specification, but the text of the claims. Think of the claims as a checklist: once a patent is granted, another product infringes the patent if it checks off every element recited in the claims: If it's missing an element, it doesn't infringe.
• Its important to understand that you don't "file a patent", you file a "patent application," in pretty much every country in the world. Sounds pedantic, but it's important to realize that an applicant can put essentially anything in their patent application, but that doesn't mean a country's going to recognize it. Generally, a well-drafted patent application will include support for multiple concentric levels of claims (think of a giant bulls eye, with your product in the center). You go in trying to get the broadest protection, and then during patent examination the claims are almost always narrowed.
• What that image above shows is not an excerpt from the claims, but just a figure from the specification. Without more context, it's impossible to know its significance to the claims. Is it illustrating the current state of the art? Is it illustrating the invention itself? If so, is the invention the entire figure, or just one of the elements? Has the applicant made an innovation in one of those elements (e.g., specifying a specific alloy that's particularly well suited?).
• In my experience, patents are, if anything, harder to obtain in China than in, e.g., the U.S. I'd be shocked if a Chinese patent examiner were somehow to allow a patent claiming technology that was already publicly disclosed. In my experience, it's usually the exact opposite that happens: You're trying to claim something genuinely inventive, and the Examiner relies on hindsight to say that your invention would have been obvious.

Taking all of that together, this seems to me to have about as much significance as Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy. At this point, at most you have some patent applications, with some figures that look familiar. Without more than that, it's tough to know what's actually going on, and the one making a ruckus about it doesn't seem to know what he's talking about. Right now, it's a bit like prostate cancer: your best strategy is watchful waiting.