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E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

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Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#91

Goddammit I hate patents, trade secrets and intellectual property. I want this out there on all my devices. Imagine how much less energy we'd use, how much less e-waste we would generate, and how grateful our eyes would be if we weren't staring at blue lights all day.

Its difficult to find the details on this because these companies are so secretive, but from everything I have seen, the e paper technology we have is completely useless for anything but displaying mostly static content. The refresh time is insanely slow so simply typing text or scrolling a page would be almost impossible.

Also almost all of the full color eink screens I have been able to find details on are actually just normal TFT LCD displays with some matte film over the top. The core eink tech seems to be fairly easily changed to get 3 colours at the cost of 15 second refresh times but any more colurs seems unlikely.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#92
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I am so against intellectual monopoly like this. It does not create continuous incentive to innovate and instead allows companies with just a bit of innovation to rest on their laurels. I think there would be much more innovation in the world, aka a “higher rate of innovation” without intellectual monopolies and intellectual property restrictions.

Why would you want to innovate when the bigger competitor can just copy you without paying you anything? This current situation is unfortunate, but I think it's an imperfection of the market. If the patent owning company had been a bit less greedy, they could have made far more money with it.

How E ink innovations come to happen?

I think it was developed by MIT and not by E INK, is that right?

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#93
post #78

E-ink is one of those techs that only advanced when large batches of patents expire. E-ink the company has tied up the tech stack in so many patents, NDA's, and exorbitant prices that no one wants to touch it. E-ink the technology wont go any where for 10-15 years when that next big batch of patents expire. Its just like 3D displays and VR there will be a massive consumer push new batches of patents will be filed pro…

And this is why patent duration should be tied to product lifecycle length. Pharma where you need 10 years to pull off clinical trials could keep 23 years, but consumer hardware where new generation of devices launch within 2 years should be limited to 10 years. Software should likely be limited to 5 years.

Alternatively, make the cost to renew a patent each year increase exponentially, with the base proportional to the worth of the individual/company filing the patent at the time of filing.

That ties the duration of a patent directly to how much value it provides to the company over time, which is the rationale for having patents in the first place. A company could only afford to hold onto a patent for as long as it causes the company’s revenue to grow exponentially. Once the patented technology matures and growth plateaus, keeping the patent would become prohibitively expensive. This would completely eliminate patent trolls and patent squatting/speculative patents.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#94

So I’ll ask here as there may be some lurkers who can help me in my quest: I am trying to find a basic e-reader. I have a simple want: I want a built in browser that will let me download ePub and pdf etc from the browser. I’m not interested in bundled bookstores. I’m not keen on having to load books onto it via a pc app nor emailing them nor having an Amazon account neither. I just want to be able to browse and downl…

I got my MobiScribe last week after trying out a ReMarkable (v1) for a bit.

The screen isn't as nice to write on, but the software works better for me (I hate to say that; it's Android (4.4!)) and it has a backlight.

There's the option to sideload apps, but there is a browser installed when you buy it. Downloading books and apps can be done over WiFi.

I have to say I like it. The option to replace the reader gives you flexibility, as did the community offerings on the ReMarkable.

MobiScribe costs less, and is smaller.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#95

E-ink is one of those techs that only advanced when large batches of patents expire. E-ink the company has tied up the tech stack in so many patents, NDA's, and exorbitant prices that no one wants to touch it. E-ink the technology wont go any where for 10-15 years when that next big batch of patents expire. Its just like 3D displays and VR there will be a massive consumer push new batches of patents will be filed pro…

I'd love a newsletter that tracked what patents were expiring on any given week. I'm pretty ignorant of what's coming down the pipeline from a legal perspective.

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#96
post #12

I'm still waiting for widely available and affordable e-ink displays for tinkerers. I'd love to put one onto a Raspberry Pi to show some information, but it's just too expensive right now.

An 2nd Hand Kindle paperwhite is £30. You can us it as a monitor https://barwap.com/projects/okmonitor/

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#97

E-ink is one of those techs that only advanced when large batches of patents expire. E-ink the company has tied up the tech stack in so many patents, NDA's, and exorbitant prices that no one wants to touch it. E-ink the technology wont go any where for 10-15 years when that next big batch of patents expire. Its just like 3D displays and VR there will be a massive consumer push new batches of patents will be filed pro…

Patents have stalled technology in many areas since a long time. The book "Against Intellectual Monopoly" [1] by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine analyze the economical impact of patterns on society. They give some surprising examples, like how the Wright brothers invested heavily in patents and legal actions to stiffle competition instead of continuing development of airplanes.

[1] http://dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#98

So I’ll ask here as there may be some lurkers who can help me in my quest: I am trying to find a basic e-reader. I have a simple want: I want a built in browser that will let me download ePub and pdf etc from the browser. I’m not interested in bundled bookstores. I’m not keen on having to load books onto it via a pc app nor emailing them nor having an Amazon account neither. I just want to be able to browse and downl…

I use a Kobo Clara HD. It has a Kobo store where you can buy books, or you can use the “experimental web browser”, point it to libgen or your libraries website, and download whatever book you want. More often than not though I just hook it up to my Linux laptop and transfer books via usb.

I use a Kobo Libra H2O which has been quite good to me. For people that want to take it to the next level, there's the calibre-web project[1]. It's able to tie into calibre and push books to kobo devices through the built-in sync command.

[1] https://github.com/janeczku/calibre-web

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#99

E-ink is one of those techs that only advanced when large batches of patents expire. E-ink the company has tied up the tech stack in so many patents, NDA's, and exorbitant prices that no one wants to touch it. E-ink the technology wont go any where for 10-15 years when that next big batch of patents expire. Its just like 3D displays and VR there will be a massive consumer push new batches of patents will be filed pro…

What perplexes me more is not the patents (since they are public information), but the NDAs. They could've kept the underlying technology and manufacturing process patented, while at the same time selling mass quantities of the displays to everyone who wants to buy some and freely publishing all the information on how to drive them (which actually turns out to be not that difficult.) I bet that would actually get them more profit than the situation today.

That has not stopped the more creative and resourceful individuals, however:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14124086

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGVZCEuoccE

Re: E Ink has developed a 2nd generation Advanced Color E-Paper

#100
post #12

I'm still waiting for widely available and affordable e-ink displays for tinkerers. I'd love to put one onto a Raspberry Pi to show some information, but it's just too expensive right now.

http://essentialscrap.com/eink/

Those are 6" 800x600 displays for ~$20-30.

Edit: here's a whole list of related models: https://github.com/vroland/epdiy

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