Dendritic Steel

[Alan Longmire]

There is also the issue of being in the public domain. One criteria is that it is an improvement on the prior art that has not been published elsewhere. Cryo and all the other similar processes, have been in the literature, for many years prior to the application of patent.

 

Remember - deep pockets are the key. Why pay a lawyer $500/hour for something than can only generate a small amount. Not cost effective. Generally it is the threat, and the on-going cost avoidance that people pay....

 

 

True, but I still don't understand how that load of hooey made it past the patent office. As you say, all of it is well documented in prior publication, BUT: somehow it still got assigned a patent number. The language of said patent is so inclusive of any and all processes involving all known metals and thermal manipulation thereof that only an absolute drooling moron of a patent clerk could have thought it was anything new. On the other hand, it took a smart and devious lawyer to word it the way it was worded. Could one perhaps challenge the validity of the patent with the patent office without entering into a lawsuit with the owner? That might be a good solution.

 

That whole threat/avoidance thing is what burns me about the legal system. When I first moved to the place I live now, two of my neighbors tried to use the system to steal some of my land so that they could widen their joint driveway to 30 feet (20 feet wider than the road it turns off of), which is legally merely used by them through right of egress, as they don't own the land. One of the two didn't even bother to talk to me about it first! They were counting on the greater depth of their own pockets to allow them to steal that land. They took it all the way to the state supreme court hoping that we'd run out of money. Cost us five years of stress and into five figures, and we are by no means easily able to afford that. What can I say, I like my privacy and my trees. That plus the principle of the thing. I'm an easy-going guy, but you do not mess with me and mine. And if you piss off my wife, watch the @!^$#$ out!

 

Tim, I suspect that's how you feel as well. Were I you I'd just not have any further contact with this person. If they sue, I suspect many in the knife community would contribute to a legal defense fund, since this is an issue that affects us all.

Edited November 19, 2007 by Alan Longmire

[Matt Bower]

True, but I still don't understand how that load of hooey made it past the patent office.

 

Patent clerks are overworked and underpaid, and I'm guessing that heat treatment of metals isn't their highest priority assignment right now. It's not that sexy compared to biotech, software, computer hardware, etc. Plus, good patent clerks can earn a lot more money in the private sector, so I'm sure there's a lot of turnover at the PTO.

 

Could one perhaps challenge the validity of the patent with the patent office without entering into a lawsuit with the owner?

 

Yes. Sort of. I don't know much about the details. See here: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/...s/2600_2612.htm (I think any of us who wanted to could file a request for reexamination.) And here: http://www.baypatents.com/reexam.asp. Here's a not-for-profit that files requests for reexamination: http://www.pubpat.org/index.htm

 

That whole threat/avoidance thing is what burns me about the legal system.

 

I used to be skeptical, but I'm now pretty well convinced that the European system is better. The general rule in Europe -- in most of the world outside the U.S., in fact - is that the loser pays all or part of the winner's costs in civil litigation. So there's a strong disincentive to litigate weak cases: not only do you end up paying your own lawyer, but you end up paying the other guy's too! Not only is this a disincentive against bringing cases in the first place, but it should also affect how lawyers choose their clients. In this country plaintiffs' attorneys will often take clients with shallow pockets because getting paid doesn't depend on the depth of the client's pockets; it just depends on winning the case. (The art is in being able to tell which cases will pay.) But there's no really comparable incentive for defense lawyers to take the same kinds of clients. Even if they win, they're apt not to get paid. A loser-pays system would make it more profitable to defend clients who aren't wealthy.

 

If they sue, I suspect many in the knife community would contribute to a legal defense fund, since this is an issue that affects us all.

 

Glad you mentioned that, Alan. I was thinking of suggesting it myself.

Edited November 19, 2007 by Matt Bower

[Alan Longmire]

Way to go, Matt!

 

I think the prior art thing can certainly be used against the supposed pending wootz-related patent (crossover from another forum, same case) that is one of the many this person is attempting to enforce, despite the fact that one cannot enforce a pending patent. All we need now is a good patent lawyer who will work for sharp and pointy objects! The not-for-profit organization was a great link, I'll have to remember that one, but I don't know if they'd get involved in this instance since it's one small business against another.

 

I'd love to be able to recover costs in my own suit, but it was filed and prosecuted in chancery court which has a whole different set of rules. Which is not to say a civil case has not crossed my mind, but again there's that cost thing... Instead I just make an effort to stroll on the disputed ground as often as possible.

[Matt Bower]

So far we don't know anything at all about those supposed applications except that he says he filed them, and he claims they apply. Not sure I'm willing to take his word on that. So I really don't know whether prior art might invalidate them. I have absolutely no idea what he may be claiming!

[McAhron]

I read no mention of the steels looks in that patent,only an exact recipe.Theoreticly if you changed just one variable from his you would not be in patent violation.Also you made no mention of using,selling, or describing your product as technow%^%ts,therefore you have not violated the trademark agreement either.Call it "damascus like"Tell him to f himself,write blade magazine as well as the other publications,as well as postimg your interactions on every knife forum out there and report only the facts of your interactions,be carefull to use no inuendo,feelings,or any statements outside the facts.

I understand fluffys needs to protect his investment,time,and business but this is going to far.I question whether buyers would feel differently about those products if they knew the vindictiveness and un-brotherly attitude.After all many buy custom knives as a means to be part of something.I doubt people would want to be part of that if they Knew.

Many makers sell mono-steel knives with a damascus look.Take Ed fowler for example.I dont see him being threatened by fluffy,eventhough it is Ed's thermcycling that leads to a damascus like look in mono-steel.Also the fact the steel comes from Admiral already in that state of banding/dendricts,how could you be held accountable?All you did was follow a common and routine heat treating process that has been used,written about and documented in books,documents and through apprenticeships from well before the time fluffy was born.A patent is supposed to have a unique property to it that differerentiates itself from others.What is unique or different about fluff's process's that enables him to respond legaly?The steel?Exact recipe?Looks?Well the steel he uses isnt unique.The recipe isnt unique or even invented by him as it is meatalurgical practices whithin the rhelm of science and has been used by others before him.And as far as looks go,lets see him sue Damascus India where wootz may have been born a little bit before fluffy was born.I for one will write Blade and the other publications about this subject whith no mentioning of fluffys business name/copyrights/or trademarks.I will adress what is brotherly and unbrotherly about the custom knife business/hobby.Maybe title it the "Dirty Little Secrets Within The Custom Knife World."

[McAhron]

I loved the idea of a defense fund.I bet money would pour in by the truck load if people knew what is happening.Report these dealings on the forums and theorize about a defense fund.In numbers there is strength,bullies always go after the weak and with enough"back-up" I bet fluffy will run with his tail between his knees.I will also make a personal opinion that fluffys products are over priced,over rated, and ugly.

[Mike Turner]

Alan I was thinking the same thing about legal defense fund. We do need to stand together we are weak standing alone. I think we should get some metallurgists to shoot this guy down, it would be good to have one go to court with Tim if it went that far. I know the TKN has a worthy cause deal over there to help out with things as such. I think Tim will qualify for the worthy cause if the suit happens I hope it does not.

 

I forgot I think we should on a mass protest his claim to his patents and see what kind of waves we can make.

Edited November 20, 2007 by Mike Turner

[Steve R]

I would be more than happy to contribute to a defense fund in benefit of Mr. Lively in the event that this goes to court. As a beginning bladesmith (or parasitic teach-me-how wannabe, depending on your point-of-view) who has received most of my information from helpful, experienced smiths on this forum and elsewhere, I feel that the type of behaviour exhibited by Mr. Watson should be strongly discouraged. To that end, I think even better than a defense fund would be a fund to support the re-examination of all of Mr. Watson's patents on the grounds of prior art and obviousness. Comments like:

I am not one of the "all knowledge should be free" type of nuts that seems to be so prevalent amongst the parasitic teach-me-how wannabes. I spent years developing these techniques. Anyone that wants to use them must license them from me. - Daniel Watson

have no place in this otherwise wonderful, free-thinking community. Hats off to everyone here (and elsewhere) that makes it so.

 

/steve

[Giuseppe Maresca]

All this fact looks absurd to me. I own old books from early '900 that talks about alloy banding (damascus like surface on monosteel "non UHC" blades) obtainable with thermal cicles. Nothing new, and if you need I can post some pics of the the page of the book here.

This guy is going to patent the recipe to boil the water.

Edited November 20, 2007 by Giuseppe Maresca

[Matt Bower]

All this fact looks absurd to me. I own old books from early '900 that talks about alloy banding (damascus like surface on monosteel "non UHC" blades) obtainable with thermal cicles. Nothing new, and if you need I can post some pics of the the page of the book here.

This guy is going to patent the recipe to boil the water.

 

Giuseppe, would you mind posting the title and publisher information of that book (or those books)?

[Giuseppe Maresca]

of course... both are manuals published by "Ulrico Hoepli".

Title: "Manuale dell'operaio" (labourer's manual) 1916

Author: G. Belluomini

 

Title: "Ricettario Industriale" (industrial recipes) 1919

Author: ing. I. Ghersi

 

Both are written in italian. They describe how to obtain "indian steel" look on monosteel blades, simply with very slow cooling from red hot, and then etching it with nitric acid.

[Richard Furrer]

Tim,

I am here should you need me.

I have a little knowledge which may be of use on this subject.

 

Ric

[Matt Bower]

Thank you, Giuseppe!

Edited November 20, 2007 by Matt Bower

[Nick Steele]

I've recently devised a method of making water hard and chunky, which i call water hard-chunkification.

The hardened water can be placed in beverages, etc to keep them cool, and gradually turns back to normal water. Reckon i could patent that?

Furthermore:

QUOTE(Tim Lively @ Nov 18 2007, 05:14 PM)

 

ARE YOU GOING TO BARK ALL DAY LITTLE DOGGIE OR ARE YOU GOING TO BITE?

 

Hurry up with that lawsuit Dragon, I'm an impatient man.

 

Some people can just make a lot of noise and get nothing done, i suppose i'm one of them. If you did indeed stumble across this process by accident, then i don't see how he can object to it.

Ah...one more thing for the metalurgists:

If the knife were to be normalised, would the banding, be it carbide banding or alloy banding disappear?

Edited November 20, 2007 by Nick Steele

[Matt Bower]

I've recently devised a method of making water hard and chunky, which i call water hard-chunkification.

The hardened water can be placed in beverages, etc to keep them cool, and gradually turns back to normal water. Reckon i could patent that?

 

Not if I get to the Patent Office first! And then the world will beg me for hard, chunky water! And I will hold the world ransom for . . . one MILLION dollars!

Edited November 20, 2007 by Matt Bower

[Tim Lively]

I talked to a patent lawyer today and I was told that as long as I dont sell the material in question that he doesnt have a case against me. My wife is totally stressed out about the thought of being sued so Ive decided to just back off with making any more blades like this. He may still come after me but I feel confident that it will get thrown out of court as soon as I inform the judge that I havent sold any knives with blades like this. He has effectively stopped me from exploring the posibilities of this steel. Now I know some of yall never thought much of this alloy banding but I liked the edge a lot and the unusual landscape seemed to fit in with my style and tastes. Im usually tougher than this but my lady comes first. So Im just going to stop with this line of exploration and try some other styles.

 

I very much appreciate everyones support on this forum. Thanks!

Edited November 21, 2007 by Tim Lively

[Mike Turner]

Tim,

 

Here is a thought just sell sheaths and throw in a FREEE knife. Well just a thought. Should ask the patent lawyer about giving the knives away if that can be done. I understand your feelings and most of us have the lady figure to contend with. But someone needs to take this guy and his obtuse patent down maybe when I get deep pockets or enough of us get together with empty pockets get together and file a class action lawsuit against him.

[Beau Erwin]

It would be interesting to see what Admiral would have to say on the subject, as the guy is basically saying that by using their steel with the allow banding that people are infringing on his patent?

 

To me it sounds like it shouldn't apply at all if it's just something that occurs in steel.

 

The idea of a bunch of people emailing these places to review the patent sounds interesting though.

 

So is the guy saying that if you sell a blade that has alloy banding, he'll be coming after you?

[Kevin R. Cashen]

Tim has done us all a great service by bringing this to public attention, for too long things can be the white elephant in the corner that nobody wants to mention, this leads to those unaware of a peril open to being a victim of it, while others watch it happen. One of my favorite quotes of all time is the well known one by Edmund Burke. All of my good feelings about the people in this business have been reinforced by the reactions in this thread and the one on Bladeforums, we now all see the threat and we immediately circled the wagons. The internet now makes it possible for us to come together for strength and show a united front within hours. There are always a few bad eggs in any crowd but I would put my full trust in the collective conscience of the knifemaking community any day.

 

Every knifemaking forum on the net is filled with posts of alloy banding asking what it is, how the poster got it, how to get rid of it etc... People make these blades very regularly by accident, it is a very commonly occurring thing that can result almost anytime you heat steel enough for diffusion to occur, and often it is in the bars right from the mill we just don't etch it to see. In light of this do you folks actually think a legitimate patent could be obtained that could prevent it from being done? For such an exclusive invention enough people have been doing the same thing in blades over the years, in this case a maker stumbled upon it by accident without even trying! Doesn't sound like a very powerful, earth changing secret to me. Heck long before there were any words of patents I debunked the mystery with a popular internet image of banded 52100 with my initials in the pattern, it only took me a couple hours of on and off abusing the steel to get it to occur.

 

A wise friend of mine has said "until you receive a summons, there is no suit!", so I would use this as a wake up call and definitely be prepared, but I also would not allow this to consume me until the papers are served, that would be giving entirely too much power to an individual who merits it much less than most. Already the fringe element has won a victory; the mere threat has bullied Tim enough to avoid doing something that wasn’t even intentional. What now? Will this change knifemaking? Will we all be looking over our shoulders? Will future posts of banding be immediately hushed and hurried out of site for fear of displeasing a lone individual holding our industry hostage? Will Ed Fowler and others pay the license fee to owner of banding in order to do something they have been doing for years?

 

We should all feel the knife at our throats on this one, and respond exactly as many have in this thread and on Bladeforums. Unite, organize and say “enough is enough”. Since the first kids stepped onto a playground that has been the sure cure for a bully, because we all know what is hiding just under the surface of any bully. In Sept. of 2001, insignificant worms beneath our consideration got in a solid punch to the greatest nation on earth simply because they were willing to fight dirtier than we could imagine. We could take some lessons from that on how whole populations can be held hostage by fear of they fail to stand totally united and say “enough is enough”.

[Jeff Pringle]

Here is a piece of Admiral 1/4x1 1095, in as-purchased condition; as you can see the surface texture clearly indicates some alloy banding in the material:

If he were to sue, he would be claiming in a public way that his super-secret special steel is the same as this commercial discount bar stock, thus destroying his entire business model, no?

Has he actually sued anyone, other than the suit he lost against SFI?

[Steve R]

I agree wholeheartedly with your thoughts, Kevin, but for one point. Why should we stand idly by and wait for a suit to appear, when there are avenues open now that could get this quashed and thereby ensure that the path is open for all, without ever having to worry about lawsuits and threats of lawsuits? Mr. Watson's pending patents may well be currently in the public comment phase of things, when information such as you and others have already posted about the prevalence of banding in the steel world could serve to kill the application before the patent is granted. Reexamination is another avenue for patents that have already been granted. Do we really want people to be free to threaten and potentially cause financial strain to those that don't deserve it? Would it not be better to take that power away from them? I realize that any suit based on what we've seen so far would likely get thrown out pretty quickly, but you still have to pay the lawyers.

 

I'm really amazed that there don't seem to be any negative repercussions for bringing frivolous suits. Perhaps if there were, we wouldn't have to worry about these patents at all.

 

/steve

[Kevin R. Cashen]

I agree wholeheartedly with your thoughts, Kevin, but for one point. Why should we stand idly by and wait for a suit to appear, when there are avenues open now that could get this quashed and thereby ensure that the path is open for all, without ever having to worry about lawsuits and threats of lawsuits? Mr. Watson's pending patents may well be currently in the public comment phase of things, when information such as you and others have already posted about the prevalence of banding in the steel world could serve to kill the application before the patent is granted. Reexamination is another avenue for patents that have already been granted. Do we really want people to be free to threaten and potentially cause financial strain to those that don't deserve it? Would it not be better to take that power away from them? I realize that any suit based on what we've seen so far would likely get thrown out pretty quickly, but you still have to pay the lawyers.

 

I'm really amazed that there don't seem to be any negative repercussions for bringing frivolous suits. Perhaps if there were, we wouldn't have to worry about these patents at all.

 

/steve

 

A most excellent point with which I totally agree, and instead of shying away from banding perhaps the reasonalbe and friendly internet sites could be loaded with examples to illustrate how ludicrous this all is.

 

Here is a link to the thread I originally posted with banding:

http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?t=11162

 

And before anybody feels I may have stepped on their fantastic invention or recent patent LOOK AT THE DANG DATE of this thread! Also try reading texts that are older than most of the readers of this forum that cover the isssue.

Edited November 21, 2007 by Kevin R. Cashen

[Colin KC]

I agree wholeheartedly with your thoughts, Kevin, but for one point. Why should we stand idly by and wait for a suit to appear, when there are avenues open now that could get this quashed and thereby ensure that the path is open for all, without ever having to worry about lawsuits and threats of lawsuits? Mr. Watson's pending patents may well be currently in the public comment phase of things, when information such as you and others have already posted about the prevalence of banding in the steel world could serve to kill the application before the patent is granted. Reexamination is another avenue for patents that have already been granted. Do we really want people to be free to threaten and potentially cause financial strain to those that don't deserve it? Would it not be better to take that power away from them? I realize that any suit based on what we've seen so far would likely get thrown out pretty quickly, but you still have to pay the lawyers.

 

I'm really amazed that there don't seem to be any negative repercussions for bringing frivolous suits. Perhaps if there were, we wouldn't have to worry about these patents at all.

 

/steve

 

 

Damn Steve!

 

I wish there was a rep system on this site, then you'd get repped into the stratosphere!

 

That's exactly what we need (unfortunately it would mean the ones that've done it before stand up & be counted)

[Matt Bower]

I like your line of thinking, Kevin, although as a practical matter it may be a lot harder than you imagine. More on that later; right now I have a date with my forge.

 

Besides the photos, it'd be really helpful if foks here (especially you metallurgists!) would post details about any books they have that discuss alloy and/or carbide banding*, what causes it, how to produce the effect, how to eliminate it, etc. Showing prior publication is one way to defeat a patent, so those books could turn out to be valuable in the event that this issue ever ends up in court. They might also be valuable if anyone wants to file a request for reexamination, if the individual in question ever actually receives any patents for his process. (As far as I can tell he's only been granted one patent so far, and that one doesn't seem to have anything to do with banding. But until someone gets him to come forth with the numbers of the patent(s) he's claiming that Tim infringed, it's impossible to know for sure.)

 

 

 

*I'm still not sure whether they're fundamentally different things, and when Tim started this thread I was hoping you might weigh in on it. But the thread seems to have moved on to less pleasant matters.

[Mike Turner]

I totally agree with you all. We need the the guys that have been doing this longer than his claimed patent to step forward like Kevin and we need to stand together as a community. Like I said we are stronger together, together we have deeper pockets, just for a thought imagine 2000+ knifemakers against 1. Together we will be heard and felt. But we need the guys that know all of the secrets to the alloy banding and have been there done that long before his patent and we need the metallurgist to step forward and help as well. So lets compile the information and make our assault on his patent. To those that have this Admiral 1095 like Tim and Jeff maybe should you should call Admiral and see what they have to say about this threat. if we don't stop it here what's next, pattern welded steel? Forging? Stock removal? We need to squash this stupid patent.