>Not when the patents are tightly held by a greedy patent troll who seems to do everything in their power to stop hobbyists and hackers
That's a bit disingenuous and short-sighted view from people not knowing or understanding the industry, market, technology and manufacturing challenges. Sure, like any successful tech company, e-ink owns patents and controls a large part of the market more-or-less, but patents aren't the main reasons why the e-paper industry hasn't moved forward.
That's kind of like saying "ASML's and Cymer's patents are the reason the EUV lithography hasn't moved forward and why they have no competition."
No mate, that's not true. Just like EUV lithography, making e-ink tech displays, affordably, and at scale with good yields and healthy margins to keep the industry afloat, is hard, very hard, bordering on magic, which is the main reason they have no competition.
Turns out making minuscule pigment electrostatic particles that can quicky move around inside a fluid suspension and hold their position long enough at various ambient conditions, is a huge challenge, and manufacturing that at scale with very low defects and sustainable margins is even harder.
Nothing in their patents currently is holding back competition, but competition can't reach the scale and yields that would make enough profits to support a viable competitor consider even entering this field, versus OLED displays, as that's where thew real money is in display manufacturing right now and that's where the competition is heating up and where all the R&D money gets poured.
That's why there's been various alternatives to e-ink-like tech popping up from university research labs and being displayed at trade shows, but going from a research lab one-off prototype being shown at trade shows, to mass production at scale with good yields and profit margins, is the real challenge and is where e-ink has their secret sauce that nobody can successfully replicate.
Similarly how China has been showing off working home grown Xnm lithography prototype chips that can compete with TSMC, but reaching the yields and volumes of TSMC is where the impossible to cross cliff lies, and why people get confused and don't understand that the major challenge lies in manufacturing at scale and not just the core tech that makes the widget unique.
I'm not defending e-ink the company and their corporate practices, just wanted to shed some light on the technicalities of the subject and hopefully clear some of the FUD and conspiracies that get wrongfully spread around.
> That's a bit disingenuous and short-sighted view from people not knowing or understanding the industry, market, technology and manufacturing challenges.
For clarification -- disingenuous is defined as:
> not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does
In your post, are you claiming there's a shadowy group of people who at the same time are both unknowledgeable but also conspiring to hide their own knowledge?
Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker. "disingenuous " was the wrong word in that context. I meant to use it as a synonym for "unfair" and made a mistake.
>In your post, are you claiming there's a shadowy group of people who at the same time are both unknowledgeable but also conspiring to hide their own knowledge?
No, that's nowhere near close to what I claimed. I think my post was clear on what I meant despite my mistake: that people are too quick to blame e-ink the company for malice without understanding the technical challenges around industrialization of such technology and the economic factors of the e-ink-like products market (profit margins, supply/demand) that drive competition and investments, or lack thereof, in this tech.
it is definitely not a synonym for "unfair"; it is a serious attack on the integrity of the person you were responding to, and you should apologize to them
I do believe the first word in my previous comment was "sorry" for the mistake, and unfortunately I can't edit that comment anymore to correct the mistake.
Also, I have no reason to apologies to the commenter as he did not provide any evidence to support his claims that "e-ink is evil" in order for his integrity to be affected, to warrant an apology for my counter-arguments, nor do I think the original commenter is petty enough to be offended by my honest mistake, which I rectified later.
I'm not the person who apologised or the person who was apologised to, but the following, to me, reads like an appropriate apology in the context:
> Sorry, I'm not a native English speaker. "disingenuous " was the wrong word in that context. I meant to use it as a synonym for "unfair" and made a mistake.
This particular mistake (assuming disingenuous means a little less than it does) is not particularly uncommon among native english speakers (or on HN, at that).
FWIW:
> you called them a liar who was pretending to be stupid
The "pretending to be stupid" is not an essential part of the definition above (merely "typically by").
Finally, Merriam-Webster offers up other definitions:
lacking in candor
giving a false appearance of simple frankness
These don't fit particularly with the strident definition you're using.
English words are complex, with contextual and flexible meanings. You've picked one definition. And then you've attacked someone's integrity on the basis of it, which is exactly what you're arguing has been done to someone else. Don't be this guy.
The "typically" in that definition would suggest that "claiming there's a shadowy group of people who at the same time are both unknowledgeable but also conspiring to hide their own knowledge" is unnecessary to claim disingenuity.
You're on the right track, though; it's worth asking if the people criticizing patents and their stranglehold on innovation are not being candid or sincere in doing so. (The answer IMO is "no, they're being very candid and sincere, in stark contrast to most defenders of contemporary patent law", but it's nonetheless the more relevant question).
Given that the margins are so tight and the expenses so high as you've illustrated, explain to me how it's possible that the extra costs involved with licensing patented hardware is not a significant factor?
It doesn't really make sense to say that on the one hand, it's super tough and hard to make a profit, and on the other hand the costs of accessing patented hardware is an immaterial cost.
Your post just really isn't convincing that a patent here has little effect on the ability for others to compete.
When margins are as tight as you say they are then obviously the costs of licensing are going to make the margins even thinner or next to impossible for another competitor to meet.
Love when people come out here with unironic defense here of monopolies by simply defending them as some meritocratic output of success or something.
In my opinion, saying that without explaining what they misunderstood / what you disagree with them on is both snarky and unsubstantial enough to fall below the line of the HN guidelines. Especially as it's not clear to me that their interpretation isn't what you meant, and it's clear that they are arguing in good faith rather than intentionally misunderstanding. Though their last paragraph was itself snarky enough that I can see why you might have wanted to react in kind (not that that means you should). /my two cents
I didn't detail further why he misunderstood, because in my interpretation of his comment, he had his pitchfork out and falsely accused me of "defending monopolies" just to engage in flame-bait which I didn't want to fuel, and I already went into enough details in my original comment to explain why he misunderstood and why my original explanation is not "defending monopolies" but presenting the facts, he just has to read it again carefully with an open mind and with his pitchfork down.
Fair enough to not want to engage, but in that case you could just not engage rather than adding more snark.
But ideally, even if you think they don't deserve your explanation, considering it's a public forum you could still explain why you think there wrong for the benefit of the rest of us who maybe also don't understand your argument.
>Fair enough to not want to engage, but in that case you could just not engage rather than adding more snark.
That wasn't snark from my end, I was just telling him he was wrong, as plead for him to re-read my comment again with an open mind. That's it. Actual snark would have added more fuel to his flame-bait which I didn't want to do.
> considering it's a public forum you could still explain why you think there wrong for the benefit of the rest of us who maybe also don't understand your argument
Because I don't have more information than that of my original comment, which is based on some years of experience developing products with e-ink displays and getting to know the tech and the company to a degree that allows me to have a relatively informed opinion to a degree on this topic.
And, because you can never please everyone no matter what you do, and some members can be overly contrarian and needlessly pedantic at times when it contradicts their entrenched belief that "evil corp is evil", expecting "sauce or GTFO" for every opinion on the matter (even though they themselves provided no proof for their "evil corp is evil" opinion), but I don't have or can't publicly share any documents to provide proof or more deep insight into the matter, nor the time to perform investigative journalism on the spot based on public OSS data, just to win an argument here.
Like I said, it's just my opinion based on my experience in the field, so take it as is with a pinch of salt, as an opinion of an average joe on the internet, not as a proper journalistic piece.
That's a bit disingenuous and short-sighted view from people not knowing or understanding the industry, market, technology and manufacturing challenges. Sure, like any successful tech company, e-ink owns patents and controls a large part of the market more-or-less, but patents aren't the main reasons why the e-paper industry hasn't moved forward.
That's kind of like saying "ASML's and Cymer's patents are the reason the EUV lithography hasn't moved forward and why they have no competition."
No mate, that's not true. Just like EUV lithography, making e-ink tech displays, affordably, and at scale with good yields and healthy margins to keep the industry afloat, is hard, very hard, bordering on magic, which is the main reason they have no competition.
Turns out making minuscule pigment electrostatic particles that can quicky move around inside a fluid suspension and hold their position long enough at various ambient conditions, is a huge challenge, and manufacturing that at scale with very low defects and sustainable margins is even harder.
Nothing in their patents currently is holding back competition, but competition can't reach the scale and yields that would make enough profits to support a viable competitor consider even entering this field, versus OLED displays, as that's where thew real money is in display manufacturing right now and that's where the competition is heating up and where all the R&D money gets poured.
That's why there's been various alternatives to e-ink-like tech popping up from university research labs and being displayed at trade shows, but going from a research lab one-off prototype being shown at trade shows, to mass production at scale with good yields and profit margins, is the real challenge and is where e-ink has their secret sauce that nobody can successfully replicate.
Similarly how China has been showing off working home grown Xnm lithography prototype chips that can compete with TSMC, but reaching the yields and volumes of TSMC is where the impossible to cross cliff lies, and why people get confused and don't understand that the major challenge lies in manufacturing at scale and not just the core tech that makes the widget unique.
I'm not defending e-ink the company and their corporate practices, just wanted to shed some light on the technicalities of the subject and hopefully clear some of the FUD and conspiracies that get wrongfully spread around.