Essential Is Getting Sued For Allegedly Stealing Wireless Connector Technology (gizmodo.com) 43
"Keyssa, a wireless technology company backed by iPod creator and Nest founder Tony Fadell, filed a lawsuit against Essential on Monday, alleging that the company stole trade secrets and breached their nondisclosure agreement," reports Gizmodo. Keyssa has proprietary technology that reportedly lets users transfer large files in a matter of seconds by holding two devices side by side. From the report: According to the lawsuit, Keyssa and Essential engaged in conversations in which the wireless tech company "divulged to Essential proprietary technology enabling every facet of Keyssa's wireless connectivity," all of which was protected under a non-disclosure agreement. More specifically, the lawsuit alleges that Keyssa "deployed a team 20 of its top engineers and scientists" to educate Essential on its proprietary tech, sending them "many thousands of confidential emails, hundreds of confidential technical documents, and dozens of confidential presentations." Essential ended this relationship after over 10 months and later told Keyssa that its engineers would use a competing chip in the Essential Phone. But Keyssa is accusing Essential of including techniques in its phone that were gleaned from their relationship, despite their confidentiality agreement. Central to this lawsuit is one of the Essential Phone's key selling points: the option to swap in modular add-ons, made possible thanks to the phone's unique cordless connector. In short, if Keyssa's claims hold water, then one of the phone's defining factors is a product of theft.
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Having been an early adopter of new phones since the early Motorola flip phones I was a little sceptical about this phone but I can that it is without doubt and by a long margin the best phone I have ever owned.
You're not going to get paid for astroturfing if nobody believes you. Try: using a registered account, including some product details (more than zero is a good start) and tone down the superlatives a bit. Every product has a downside, but by mentioning those and minimizing them people will tend to
Did it 20 years ago... (Score:4, Funny)
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"wireless connector" (Score:4, Insightful)
tooth brushes (Score:2)
Tooth brushes use literally wireless charging cables (e.g.: BRaun's Oral B)
There's a *cable* bringing power to within a receptacle in the tooth brush.
Inside the receptacle, the power transmission doesn't use any contact, only *wireless* charging.
As I've mentioned in my car analogy [slashdot.org], this has the benefit of aligning everything and insurance best possible power transmission efficiency.
Car keyfob (Score:2)
Actually that really exists in the real world.
Car keyfobs are an everyday example (and ob /. car analogy) :
- There's a mechanical connector that grabs and holds firmly the key fob/card on the dashboard's receptacle.
(e.g.: Volvo, Mercedes Benz, Saab, Renault, etc.)
- There are no electrical contact at all. All transmission happens over wireless (most) or by infrared (some older Mercedes), charging/powering is done wireless by induction (most).
It's literally a wireless connector.
This has the benefit of making
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For the manufacturer, too, that's exactly what it's called [latticesemi.com].
The Magic of Wireless! (Score:5, Insightful)
This sort of thing really hacks me off. Keyssa's technology is just an extremely short range radio link. Being short range, they immediately gain massive channel SNR improvements while still remaining within RF regulatory limits. This naturally (as in, the fundamental laws of physics) allows them to push more data through the channel compared to a similar long-range, omni-directional RF link, and they will just be using a standard modulation scheme - possibly even a very inefficient one - to do that.
All the magical claims they make on their website are a direct consequence of physics - not some stupidity on behalf of the WIFI developers.
There is nothing magic about this. There is not even anything novel about this. At best they would have done some measurements/sims of the channel and applied an appropriate bunch of standard signal processing techniques to best deal with the channel characteristics, though I imagine that since the channel is so well defined (their system even slots together to mechanically hold the antenna in position) they barely even had to do this.
Why do we put up with this sort of junk as a society? There are plenty of companies that do not have particularly protectable technology (e.g. the numerous GPS chipset vendors) but compete and make money by having high quality, easy to use products that are more desirable than their competitors, or by offering better support. I'm sure that if Keyssa had a better product then their competitors at the right price they would be in the Essential phone right now.
Cars, and others... (Score:2)
Congratulations, you figured it out in 30 seconds when it otherwise took a team of 20+ engineers a considerable amount of time to come up with a working solution.
He didn't even need to *figure out*.
Using mechanical coupling to increase wireless charging power efficiency or better data transmission has been used for ages in car's keyfob and some (non-QI) smartphone charging docks [slashdot.org] or toothbrush wireless charging cables [slashdot.org] (yep, it's a cable but it charges wirelessly. Because fuck everything).
This thing is litteraly something that has been already known and even actually used in production.
The company suing each other haven't invented something revolutionary and never tho
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(yep, it's a cable but it charges wirelessly. Because fuck everything).
Because toothbrushes get wet and they have your toothpaste spit dripping down them..
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At best they would have done some measurements/sims of the channel and applied an appropriate bunch of standard signal processing techniques to best deal with the channel characteristics
So Keyssa spent a bunch of time, energy, and money to develop techniques for high-speed close range data transfer using existing tool sets and you don't think that's patent-able? Isn't that 100% the point of patents? To make inventions available for others to build off of, with the ability to protect yourself if someone blatantly takes what you've invented without paying you for it?
"radio links work better when they are close together, for obvious reasons" and "it's not that hard and it's been done before
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Fucking beat me to it. This is exactly the TransferJet technology demoed like 10 years ago.
Someone should let Sony know that Keyssa is violating their patents.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransferJet: 560 Mbit/s (max) / 375 Mbit/s (effective throughput)
Hardly sounds capable of "allow[ing] transfers of large files like movies in a matter of seconds".
A quick google came up with this (and a number of references to it) http://www.keyssa.com/intel_2i... [keyssa.com] claiming 5Gbps for Keyssa's tech. But sure, 375Mbps is pretty close. It's like saying LTE has been "done before" because we had TDMA 10 years ago.
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Keyssa alleged that despite Essential’s use of a different chip, the final Essential Phone design incorporates many of the techniques developed by Keyssa to make wireless connectors function well in a phone, from antenna designs to methods for testing phones on the manufacturing line.
I struck out trying to find the actual complaint, but based on the vague summary from the article, seems like those would be pretty hard to prove.
They do have about 50-ish patents/applications, a number of them relating to high-bandwidth interconnects. But you are correct, this lawsuit (again, from the vague article) is about trade secrets. And I'm right there with ya, the non-compete I had to sign for my new job pretty much says "unless you disclose an invention you have cr
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Because it's worth it. We want to vote for Democrats and Republicans in every election, or else stay home. Seeing any other party on the ballot is distasteful enough, but actually voting for non-evil people would be intolerably repugnant. (Because if you don't vote for your evil people, those other evil people might win!!)
Allowing bullshit patent (and other) policies, is the small price we pay to have elections be the way we want them.
C'mon, people, thi
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I believe it operates in the V band at 60 GHz but they did not implement the WiGig standard. It's a pretty cool single chip solution tho... There are a few competing products in the market, 60 GHz space is crowded. I'd personally hold of until the E-band (70/80/90 GHz) or D-band (~140 GHz) single chip implementations hit the market. They have better range than 60 GHz and a lot more bandwidth... 100 Gbps wireless isn't too far away...
They're not the only one (Score:2)
Google is accused of the same thing [mercurynews.com] on a large scale. I guess the Apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it?
Initial agreement (Score:1)
Maybe Tony Fuckdell should sue the USB regulators (Score:2)
Since the Essential phone implements, "Wireless USB."