Unfortunately 'regulation' is entirely in Deere's favor, thanks to the USPTO and their habit of allowing companies to claim underlying ideas rather than specific implementations.
A method for operating a mobile robot, the method
comprising:
- Collecting range data of one or more objects in an environment around the robot;
- Identifying uniquely identifiable ones of the objects as
navigation landmarks:
- Storing a reference map of the navigation landmarks based
on the collected range data;
- Establishing a list or sequence of way points for the robot to visit, each way point defined with reference to one or more landmarks;
- Reading a message on a tag posted at or near one or more
way points; and
- Managing a task based on the read message.
When this claim was granted by the USPTO, John Deere was given exclusive rights to the general concept of robot navigation between waypoiints with the addition of "reading a message on a tag" and acting accordingly. To the layman this language sounds specific enough, but those skilled in the art (or in possession of an HN user name) will recognize it as Turing equivalence. Indeed, the next few claims make it clear that ownership of the idea of conditional execution of tasks at waypoints is exactly the goal of the patent.
So, good luck building a competing farm implement that actually does anything useful. The "innovators" at Deere have made sure that you can do no such thing for the next 12 years.
That's not how patents work. Each claim is not a patented thing. A chain of claims forms the patented thing. There's at least 9 dependent claims hanging on that first one.
Right. It’s best to think of the claims in a patent as a set of DAGs (a single patent can contain multiple “inventions”). To infringe, you have to go from a starting node to a connected ending node and implement/match all nodes along the path.
Have to admit I've never heard this in my life. If this is the case, then TIL, thanks!
I will say that my point largely stands, though: the leaf nodes of this particular DAG are places where you will almost inevitably end up if you want to implement robotic farm machinery. Deere averages a couple hundred patents a year, so if you don't step on this specific land mine, another one will get you.
The dependency chain flows upward, not downward. Later claims depend on the earlier ones that they reference ("2. The method of claim 1..."), but the presence of claim 2 does not alter the meaning or enforcability of claim 1.
(I should point out that IANAL, so if there are instances in which this isn't strictly correct, it'd be interesting to learn about them. Downvoting without comment doesn't enlighten anyone.)
we need regulation. force companies to provide a minimum standard of repairability.