The other day my 5th mini-mouse in a year quit,
the left-click button went, all of them were cheapies
with parts from China.  So instead to going up to
the store to spend another $20, I rumaged around
and found the pile of dead mice I hadn't got around
to tossing out yet and soldered out a switch and
put it in this mouse. Saved a few bucks and a trip
to the store.  It also was kind of fun, so I figured
I'd go look up that project where a guy rigged the
mouse sensor to work as a camera, (they're sort of
low resolution at 18x18). Anyway, I was reading
the comments on the forum there and saw that
one guy had tried to get a mouse to work as a
barcode reader, which sounded (somewhat) handy.
So I googled looking to see if anyone had
actually managed to do that yet, and what pops up?
The Chineese mouse chip manufacturer has patented
the idea, how is that even legal? It wasn't their idea,
they didn't invent barcodes, it's just a camera, they
haven't even actually built a working one, and they're
looking to get over on some mouse maker putting a
barcode reader in a mouse.

What's with the Chineese (PRC) anyways?  This
weekend they broke into the Pentagon's computers,
and now nukes are flying around without orders,
hope it's not related.

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> The other day my 5th mini-mouse in a year quit,
> the left-click button went, all of them were cheapies
> with parts from China.

Good luck in finding even an expensive mouse without parts from China :-)

> I'd go look up that project where a guy rigged the
> mouse sensor to work as a camera, (they're sort of
> low resolution at 18x18).

I was thinking the same about using the camera in my Wii remote to actually 
look at stuff (it currently just detects the position of a bank of LEDs 
above the TV).  It must be higher resolution than 18x18 because there are 8 
or 10 LEDs and it can detect position and orientation pretty accurately. 
I'm sure someone has had the idea already...

> So I googled looking to see if anyone had
> actually managed to do that yet, and what pops up?
> The Chineese mouse chip manufacturer has patented
> the idea, how is that even legal? It wasn't their idea,

How do you know it wasn't their idea?  If you have found someone else who 
filed a patent before them, then I'll let you off :-)

> they didn't invent barcodes, it's just a camera, they
> haven't even actually built a working one, and they're
> looking to get over on some mouse maker putting a
> barcode reader in a mouse.

Well to be fair, it seems like they invented a cheap and efficient way of 
detecting position on a surface using a (very) low resolution camera.  If 
they invent a way to adapt that to reading barcodes, then that seems like 
something patentable to me...  It's probably got some advantages over 
traditional bar-code readers.  I'm pretty sure the ones you see in 
supermarkets are/were covered by a load of patents - it seems like quite a 
profitable industry in the eyes of supermarkets etc.

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Tim Attwood <tim### [at] comcastnet> wrote:
> So I googled looking to see if anyone had
> actually managed to do that yet, and what pops up?
> The Chineese mouse chip manufacturer has patented
> the idea

  Does it really matter? Nobody stops you from doing it anyways, no
matter how many patents there are on it (as long as you don't start
selling it to others). In most countries it's not even illegal to do
so. (In the few braindead countries where it technically is, who is
going to catch you?)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Tim Attwood" <tim### [at] comcastnet> wrote in message
news:46df8532$1@news.povray.org...

> What's with the Chineese (PRC) anyways?  This
> weekend they broke into the Pentagon's computers,
> and now nukes are flying around without orders,
> hope it's not related.
>
>

I think the U.S. propoganda machine is busy at work trying to make the PRC
the bad guys (Not that they need much help! I'm not sticking up for the
PRC). All of the sudden you have bad food supplies from china? bad toy
imports? china hacking the DoD? I'm not saying these things are falsified,
but why are they happening now? Why the media attention now?

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>> The other day my 5th mini-mouse in a year quit,
>> the left-click button went, all of them were cheapies
>> with parts from China.
> 
> Good luck in finding even an expensive mouse without parts from China :-)

I was going to say... aren't *all* manufactured goods from China?

(Certainly we don't manufacture anything in the UK any more. You see, we 
have these pesky *laws* that say the process has to be *safe* for the 
people employed to do it, and this makes it kind of *expensive*...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/

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Ross schrieb:
> "Tim Attwood" <tim### [at] comcastnet> wrote in message
> news:46df8532$1@news.povray.org...
> 
>> What's with the Chineese (PRC) anyways?  This
>> weekend they broke into the Pentagon's computers,
>> and now nukes are flying around without orders,
>> hope it's not related.
>>
>>
> 
> I think the U.S. propoganda machine is busy at work trying to make the PRC
> the bad guys (Not that they need much help! I'm not sticking up for the
> PRC). All of the sudden you have bad food supplies from china? bad toy
> imports? china hacking the DoD? I'm not saying these things are falsified,
> but why are they happening now? Why the media attention now?
> 
> 

The same here. Although the Chinese tried very hard to get this kind of 
reputation. There are many high tech tool companies here in Germany that 
find every now and then very bad copies of their products on the 
european market.
The funniest story had been about an elevator manufacturer from Germany 
which had been called from a building owner in China who claimed that 
their elevator was broken and asked, when the service team would show 
up. In the end the experts found a copy of one of their elevators on 
which even the tag with service numbers of the original manufacturer 
could be found ... :-)

Marc

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>  Does it really matter? Nobody stops you from doing it anyways, no
> matter how many patents there are on it (as long as you don't start
> selling it to others). In most countries it's not even illegal to do
> so. (In the few braindead countries where it technically is, who is
> going to catch you?)

What's wrong with wanting to sell a better gizmo?
If I went to the hassle of writing a complex piece of
software to do image enhancements enough to read a barcode
on a cruddy 18x18 64 level grayscale mouse image, I'd think the
right to sell it would be with the programmer who did all the work,
not with some company that says it was their idea.

Why should some company be able to patent a discovered
use of their product?  It'd be like Arm and Hammer wanting
to patent baking soda toothpaste, or Kodak patenting family
photo albums, or Ford patenting electric headlights for cars.

And, sure, nothing keeps someone from doing it
for themselves as a home project, but the threat of
lawsuits will keep anyone from investing in it as
a commercial venture.  At least without giving a cut to China.

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>> Good luck in finding even an expensive mouse without parts from China :-)
>
> I was going to say... aren't *all* manufactured goods from China?
>
> (Certainly we don't manufacture anything in the UK any more. You see, we 
> have these pesky *laws* that say the process has to be *safe* for the 
> people employed to do it, and this makes it kind of *expensive*...)

That really doesn't have anything to do with it, anything made in China that 
is organised by a reputable company will have far stricter safety and 
quality "rules" than you get in the UK.  From the point of view of, say, 
Nokia/BMW/Dell/whoever, they will have a set of guidelines that *all* 
suppliers must follow, whether they are based in Finland, UK, Hungary Mexico 
or China.  It just so happens that the Chinese can follow those guidelines 
and quality levels for far less money than most other countries.  That is 
because people are willing to work for orders of magnitude less money than 
in other countries, and when you can go for a meal in a restaurant for 
around $2 you realise why.

Take this article from the bbc:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6927156.stm

The key part is the manufacturer started doing something outside of the 
guidelines (ie using a non-approved paint supplier) and Fisher Price failed 
to notice this.  How on Earth can you guarantee the quality of products you 
are selling if you don't even know which companies are supplying the parts!

For any normal product that is manufactured you have a list of component 
part details and the suppliers, a process plan that shows exactly each step 
of the assembly and what parts are used, and then once mass production is 
about to start you AUDIT the factory to make sure everything is as it should 
be.  If Fisher Price failed to do this then it is totally their fault. 
Suppliers always try to cut corners to save money, it's not something 
confined to China.

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> What's wrong with wanting to sell a better gizmo?
> If I went to the hassle of writing a complex piece of
> software to do image enhancements enough to read a barcode
> on a cruddy 18x18 64 level grayscale mouse image, I'd think the
> right to sell it would be with the programmer who did all the work,
> not with some company that says it was their idea.

But that company probably has lots of programmers working for them who have 
likely already developed the core algorithm and software.  I don't think 
they could file the patent unless they had some description of the algorithm 
they were going to use.  Otherwise, like you say, it would be like Logitech 
saying they were going to patent using a webcam to do face recognition.

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> But that company probably has lots of programmers working for them who 
> have likely already developed the core algorithm and software.  I don't 
> think they could file the patent unless they had some description of the 
> algorithm they were going to use.  Otherwise, like you say, it would be 
> like Logitech saying they were going to patent using a webcam to do face 
> recognition.

Believe what you want, but it seems to me that trying to patent portions of
60 year old barcode patents combined with your own nearly expired
optical mouse patent is just combining two old ideas and getting a new
patent.

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