Rowing Patents

[The Stig]

x

[scullerjonny]

I posted this in the new oar company thread...but same topic

Rule 60 - Fairness - Innovations
1) Significant innovations in equipment including, but not limited to, boats, oars, related equipment and clothing, must meet the following requirements before being approved for use in the sport of rowing:
a) be commercially available to all competitors (patents may not exclude the use by a team or a competitor)


Like I said previously in that thread, you can have a patent, you can exclude other boat/equip makers. You cannot exclude teams or competitors. Hypothetical...MegaOar suddenly designs the best oar blade shape in the world...better than everyone. They can patent that shape and then C2, Croker, Dreher, Empacher etc cannot produce oars with that blade shape. But, all competitors must be able to buy the MegaOar at a reasonable price.

[The Stig]

x

[scullerjonny]

a patent is a right to exclude and not inherently exclusive. If someone gets a patent and protects their rights by going after injunctions against national federations wishing to use the patent, it is an "exclusive patent" under the FISA meaning. Old rule 58 essentially means that people with patents must not seek an injunction (against a national federation/person using the boat).

A license is not exclusive, it just is an agreement that one party will not sue you and in exchange, other party pays money...basically you can't grant an exclusive license to one national federation, because that would be a competitive advantage on the water.

Also, the granting of a patent is no longer really a monopoly in the USA. Lots of recent case law makes it very difficult for injunctions to issue after people find infringement, yes you can still collect royalties, but that isn't a monopoly.

The granting of a patent is the granting of a monopoly and monopolies never produce efficient price levels

the granting of a patent is intended to let companies recover their R&D expenses. The thought is that the R&D would never happen if a company wasn't guaranteed a way to recover their investment. "Efficient price levels" you just mean cheap...how is there supposed to be any advancement if people can't charge extra to reflect their R&D costs?

Would it be efficient to let someone do the R&D and then not give them the right to make money off their labor, then the R&D firm goes under while everyone else gets a free ride?

I could go on forever, as you can probably tell, I'm pretty involved in patent law. Spend a lot of time writing/filing patents for clients.

[The Stig]

x

[gdoyle]

Any equipment maker can seek a patent for their original work. If they are granted a patent (FISA has no say in this part whatsoever), and that work offers a significant competitive advantage on the water, then in order for it to be approved for use by FISA the manufacturer must offer it to all comers at a reasonable price. They can still be the only manufacturer if FISA decides the economics are fair.

But....the granting of the patent, pure and simple, is not within FISA's jurisdiction. They can only prevent it from being used in rowing competition.

Now...if you want some real fun, explore the patents on the ergometer (beyond FISA's control). Because, trust me, the Chinese could knock those things off like gangbusters, and probably for $350 a pop or less.

[scullerjonny]

That whole “can’t enforce” = no injunctions.

this is where we disagree maybe...just like gdoyle said, you could get an injunction against another manufacturer, but you could not get an injunction against a national federation for using the technology.

And the thing about a patented Vespoli hull shape. Thats really just a marketing thing. You can say the hull is patented and people automatically think that means its a great piece of technology...The actual patent is very narrow in scope because it patents a specific shape, and you avoid specificity on shapes at all cost when writing patents.

The thing about the Vespoli patent is that they could have had better protection of the hull shape with a copyright. There is a copyright statute that allows you to keep your own hull shape, and its much cheaper than getting a patent...But copyright doesn't have the same marketing weight as "PATENTED."

[scullerjonny]

That whole “can’t enforce” = no injunctions.

this is where we disagree maybe...just like gdoyle said, you could get an injunction against another manufacturer, but you could not get an injunction against a national federation for using the technology. "exclusive" under the FISA meaning is likely interpreted on the level of countries, not manufacturers.

And the thing about a patented Vespoli hull shape. Thats really just a marketing thing. You can say the hull is patented and people automatically think that means its a great piece of technology...The actual patent is very narrow in scope because it patents a specific shape, and you avoid specificity on shapes at all cost when writing patents.

The thing about the Vespoli patent is that they could have had better protection of the hull shape with a copyright. There is a copyright statute that allows you to keep your own hull shape, and its much cheaper than getting a patent...But copyright doesn't have the same marketing weight as "PATENTED."

[The Stig]

x

[scullerjonny]

Under Rule 60, you definitely can get an injunction against another manufacturer. I don't understand how the national federation you would be seeking to enjoin would have acquired the infringing technology unless some manufacturer produced it (whom you would presumably sue). Perhaps it could be an in-house job, but maybe that could be considered non-commercial?

If these rules didn't exist....
The NF could develop the technology, license it to a manufacturer (for the NF's use) and then get an injunction against use of patented technology by other Federations.

[scullerjonny]

The Shimano patent application....

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars ... PEC/rowing