Bear with us for a moment for a little background. The Rideau Canal Skateway in Ottawa is the world’s largest natural skating rink, providing nearly 8 km of pristine ice surface during the winter. But maintaining such a large ice surface is a challenge. A regular Zamboni can’t do it; the job is just too big. So the solution is a custom machine called the Froster, conceived by Robert Taillefer and built by Sylvain Fredette.
A patent was filed in 2010, granted by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, and later lost because important notifications started going to an apparently unchecked spam folder. The annual fee went unpaid, numerous emails went unanswered, an expiry date came and went, and that was that.
It’s true that emailed reminders (the agreed-upon — and only — method of contact) going unnoticed to spam was what caused Robert to not take any action until it was too late. We’d all agree that digital assistants in general need to get smarter, and that includes being better at informing the user about automatically-handled things like spam.
But what truly cost Robert Taillefer his patent was having a single point of failure for something very, very important. The lack of any sort of backup method of communication in case of failure or problem meant that this sad experience was, in a way, a disaster just waiting to happen. At least that’s how the Federal Court saw it when he took his complaint to them, and that’s how they continued to see it when he appealed the decision.
If you’ve never heard of the Rideau Canal Skateway or would like to see the Froster in action, check out this short video from the National Capital Commission of Canada, embedded just under the page break.
Its sees a little odd that someone decided it was worth patenting a one-off machine invented specifically for the demands of the world’s-largest-X. How many machines do you hope to sell/collect royalties, to the 2nd-, 3rd-, etc. -largest-X, that you could actually expect to cover the costs of getting and enforcing the patent?
Of course for all I know, loads of smaller ice skating rinks might be happy to upgrade to wider surfacers, even if not the 60-foot width of the original — the patent does (well, did) cover any surfacer with arms extending wider than the vehicle body.
Same… It is a pain to lose it for a dumb reason. But from a cursory glance, a patent on this is not really needed
They built a one off machine for themselves. It looks more like a prototype, so I don’t expect them to sell machines much. It’s a niche.
A patent could stop a competitor from copying exactly. In that country. Expect circumventing and have the budget to start fighting.
If you go into the market selling many machines, you will have competition. And they will certainly check if you violate other patents. Not so much a risk if you operate your one-off machine.
Sorry – I’m deillusioned from the patent game, other than boosting your resumee. For the publication list – it was granted and is still there. Nobody cares if it expired
I could imagine indoor rinks could replaceanual resurfacing with an arm the length of the rink and build into the sides using a design based on this.
The only thing I can think of is to protect themselves against copyright trolls and “competitors” in case one of them patents something they need for a machine this size and tries to go after them if/when they ever build another. Whether or not they COULD be sued for a one off “non-commercial” (the use is commercial, the building of it isn’t) machine is debatable though.
So a longer blade on a lawnmower, a wider deck. crop sprayers with longer booms.
A longer stick on your ceiling fan duster or your grandma’s apple plucker tool.
A larger version of a firetruck. A longer boom on a crane, etc.
So once again, someone simply scaled up an existing tool?
Forgive me, but I’m a bit lost as to what the magical element that was patentable here?
Making that large of an ice resurfacing wand to drag behind the machine is very difficult because of issues with ensuring even pressure and application of ice-water across the width. The devil is in the details.
And the patent covers none of these details.
Have you read the patent? evidently not.
I did. The patent doesn’t cover anything except the fact that the machine has hydraulically deployed booms that fold out and may or may not have a wheel at the end.
That’s it.
It’s an obvious design with nothing unique or special about it.
Yes, I have, and it doesn’t. If you think otherwise, surely you can provide some quotes that go into any detail?
Spent most of my working years in prototypes, troubleshooting , Up-fits on product lines from food to the packaging, repairs and short run production and a few installations. Made ink applicator systems (water based conversions from old style letterpress inks) and turned plate cylinders for 180″ wide presses or smaller. Spent time with a number of gadgets for spreading liquids for thin layers.
Wider presses or conveyor belts? Wider blade on a bulldozer? Nothing to patent there. but my employers did copy-rite the model names. Best we could do was thinking of some gimmick for a latch pin or shape of an end bracket to say was special.
Video needs to be a lot better than this one. But All I see is a sideways bar joist type frame (to keep it fairly straight against the pulling forces) and some wipers with a water line. I’ll assume that there are likely some sort of assembly joints to allow for folding or taking it apart and stacking in a carry rack somewhere, again there’s the sprayer boom and bat-wing mower ideas.
Are there any heaters on it to prevent the lines from freezing?
It’s flexy enough that Gravity is holding it in contact with the ice, plus doing the leveling.
Look at the ice ridges and undulations and resulting underwash as it makes the turn.
Notice how it’s just the green wiper that tracks the surface, check the variations of how far out the wiper squat’s from the frame in different places, simply by the ice surface undulations vs the stiffness of the bar frame.
Shrug…I just can’t see what’s novel about it.
If that’s true, why patent? It’s likely to be institutional knowledge as much as the specific design of the vehicle, and they’re not selling them, so it’s unlikely they’re at risk of having a competitor buy one and reverse engineer the design. If a competitor comes up with a similar design without reference to the original at all, then it shouldn’t have deserved a patent in the first place (but we all know how that goes.)
If they put the actual details of the design in the patent, then now that information is both no longer secret, and no longer protected, so they’re in a worse position than if they’d actually not patented in the first place…
Let’s waste whatever little freshwater we have on pointless fun. Great idea /s
Nobody is going to miss 4 cubic meters.
Fresh water is a non-renewable resource. Once we exhaust it, it’s game over. Like literaly. It’s not like oil where we can replace it with solar or wind power. If we want Earth to survive beyond 21 century we must act now before it’s too late for the final time.
Human can go on for about 15 days without food, but after 3 days without water a serious dehydration sets in. Two more days and you die of starvation.
Are you of the opinion that rain isn’t fresh water?
Where does the water go when it goes to sleep at night?
It’s literally all recycled piss.
Fact. Practically every drop of water on Earth right now, including the water that makes up a majority of our body mass, has passed through a dinosaur at least once.
Fresh water is a non-renewable resource? Excuse me but do you understand what a renewable resource is? Water is THE renewable resource.
It’s kind of true in certain circumstances. In some dry areas with little rainfall, the local aquifers don’t refill within human timescales, and is practically a non-renewable resource. The case of Saudi Arabia’s excessive use of groundwater for agricultural purposes comes to mind. Just because freshwater is a renewable resource in a general sense, doesn’t mean that it is everywhere where there is demand. Not that this would be a problem in Ottawa.
“Fresh water is a non-renewable resource.”
That’s not right at all.
For your own health, stop reading the corporate responsibility page from BP and Shell.
It literally falls from the sky, Is that not a renewable resource?
I assume you use a litterbox to save water?
Ottawa in winter =/= LA in summer.
A lot of water use is not consumptive. Flood type irrigation, while using the most water, consumes very little in my area. It’s at the bottom of the corn away from the sun and wind and percolates back to the water table from where it came.
HAHaHa “… Let’s waste whatever little freshwater we have on pointless fun …”
I want to overdose on pointless fun, Grinch!
You need to get out more, but for now, Go back to bed …
Oh no, Lake Ontario is going to run out of water!
Really disappointed that they never tried to send him physical mail. It’s still the standard for a lot of important business correspondence and legal paperwork, and rightly so as it’s harder to ignore. Still, if the guy never registered a physical mailing address then I guess that’s on him?
Or he could have instructed his agent to pay each year and bill him afterwards, instead of insisting to personally approving each payment via email.
Exactly. This wasn’t the patent system – this was between him and his agent. The agent tried to reach him. Dude was overly controlling, and he also didn’t set any calendar reminders like “check in with patent agent if I haven’t heard from them by now.”
Granted maybe the agent should have googled him, or called his welding buddy and said “hey, drop the dude a line and tell him to get in touch asap, eh?” but shrug
Deserves everything he got.
Seems like it should also be on the system – it really aught to require a company address for that very reason. Electronic systems can fail for so many reasons, many beyond the ability of the user at either end to actually prevent. But postal systems with the proof of delivery type signed for requirements are really really reliable and if it doesn’t work the sender should actually know.
things like this shouldn’t be patentable in the first place – and even if it was 10 years would be ample..
One of the reasons China has gone from a backwater to the 2nd (or 1st depending how you measure it) largest economy is not having a patent system and not having to take notice of anyone else…
At most, new ideas should only be patentable if they are are significant change from anything done before – and then only for a limited period of time. ie even if someone invented anti gravity tomorrow, they should (at most) get a 10 year patent..
Here, let me fix that second paragraph for you … “One of the reasons China has gone from a backwater to the 2nd (or 1st depending how you measure it) largest economy is by not respecting any concept of individual or collective rights, including intellectual property, personal property or personal freedoms.”
There. All fixed.
TBF that disregard for rights has been a great boon for the maker space.
It’d be a much larger pain in the ass if we couldn’t get knockoffs that can often be of the same quality for far cheaper.
(Though there are some areas where the quality is almost always dubious).
You are assuming the collective right, individual right, personal property and the patent system are the same thing or dependant from one to the other.
History had proven many times you are wrong, just have to check the patent trolling system some companies live upon.
The patent hell we’ve created is just insane for people doing things, it don’t protect them, it just allow someone with money to steal your creative work, and a big wall again innovation. Not to mention that Reinventing the wheel every time we want to build a car or paying astronomicals fees isn’t an option for much of us.
Actual patent system : not working to defend my work against big companies. Without speaking of the fact I can’t pay for the patent fees!!!
No patent system : mmmm not sure if it’s the solution but better than the actual solution…
Better solution than this binary paradox? Please, go ahead, I am all-in
the reason the patent system exists is so that knowledge isn’t lost with the inventor…the monetization is just an incentive to motivate people to publicly disclose their invention…
“One of the reasons China has gone from a backwater to the 2nd (or 1st depending how you measure it) largest economy is not having a patent system and not having to take notice of anyone else…”-also by wandering through other companies R&D areas while on a “sales tour” and accessing the employees computer systems, wholesale copying of intellectual property, sending students with instructions and expectations that it would be in their best interests to liberate cutting edge information and copy it to portable hard drives just prior to their plane back to China, contacting Chinese who have emigrated and obtained citizenship with comments about the safety of family members still in China….
At some point along that spectrum of behaviors, most people would agree that “the state” should spend more effort encouraging their own citizens to use their minds instead of swiping someone else’s work. Or at least that threatening your family is more the mark of criminals than a government that benefits its people. There’s a reason the USA get rid of kings and “nobility”, and set up a system with the explicit intent that a person could profit from their own work. The fact that subsequent generations dropped the ball on defending that, if indeed they have, doesn’t wipe out the idea that you, or I, at least are recognized under the constitution to have that right. As opposed to China.
Huh? Was there a patent for spraying water over ice?
So now anyone can make a machine to spray water over the zamboni ice court. How shocking.
Reading the Claims of the patent that he had – I wonder if one could have worked around it by just not putting any ice resurfacing arms behind the vehicle (“at least one ice resurfacing unit operatively connected to the back of said vehicle”). So, either have nothing finishing the ice on the area where the vehicle is or just put everything on the front of the vehicle (sure, it might not give as good of as a result as you then drive over the finished surface but it’s for doing an entire river for public use – how amazing will it be anyway?)
Put the arms on the front and drive backwards!
put them off to one side…
I don’t know the laws in Canada, but in the US you can petition to have the patent reinstated if circumstances beyond your control led to missed renewal fees. My understanding is that the USPTO is very reasonable and going to SPAM would qualify.
The court reasonably found that choosing electronic communication only, then not verifying it works or checking why to-be-expected regular messages not arrived for several months fails to meet reasonable care expected from someone doing business.
I run my own mail server and I certainly have problems with certain ISPs and services (looking at you Comcast and Yahoo Mail), silently just deleting emails being received by them. Not put in the user’s spam folder. Not bounced. Just disappeared. I’ve told people I know using those services they really should switch to something else, otherwise they might miss an actual important email (i.e. not one from me). But they won’t do it. I’ve had zero problems sending to Gmail accounts. I’ve set up all the proper verification protocols (SPF, DMARC, DKIM. The MX tools I’ve used all say I’m not on any blacklists. But they still drop my email.
+1 Finally somone validating my experience with Yahoo! And their support has nothing to offer when you tell them they are just ignoring thousands of emails a day, except “maybe don’t send so many”. Guys your whole job is to deliver emails to your clients.
No the real lesson here is if you have something you feel is worth patenting have a business like organizational structure to maintain your licenses. Its fine to leave your hobby sites with whatever rando email filter some corporation decides is good for you. When it comes to actual investments and licenses you should be aware of the renewal period and other important landmarks and plan accordingly.
Try contacting the IRS without a cellphone. They know everything about you and they’ll take payment 5 different ways including via mail…. but try to discuss a problem without a modern new cellphone running the IRS app and not logged into facebook, google or some other big players. Cant call. Cant mail. Cant show up in person.