Looks like some of the patents have expired, but the e-ink company keeps adding more. At least to my layman's eye the new patents don't seem to be particularly revolutionary :/
> At least to my layman's eye the new patents don't seem to be particularly revolutionary
It's the same trick that pharmaceutical companies use to extend their patents. Find a slightly new use or way that also covers the old use, and bam, exclusivity for another 20 years.
People say this but I’ve never been quite clear. Outside of medicine where you can convince doctors to insist on your new better safer cap or whatever is there anything stopping people from just building a product without the new patents. You still aren’t allowed to patent things with prior art right? So you can’t legally wait till your product is about to loose patent protection and then patent another existing aspect of it
Corporations with large legal teams are able to discourage others from experimenting in areas near expiring patents by coming up with "novel uses" and other such legal loopholes that effectively extend their patent protection despite what seem to be clear limits.
This effect in the case of eInk is clearly described by others in this thread.
Patents are irrelevant - if you think OLEDs don't have any patents then I have a bridge to sell you.
The real problem is that E-Ink is a niche product that lacks economy of scale, because LCDs do everything an EPD can do and more.
I don't know if it's been patented, but E-Ink's recent Gallery 3 screen is pretty amazing, they got multi-dye color screens to refresh fast enough to use in an e-note. That's insane, that's an order of magnitude reduction! It might actually make color e-notes a viable product category.
