Patent violators might get shut down sooner

[manuellynch]

This is a great article that shows how the USA Trade Commission may play a part in shutting down patent infringing product

http://www.ledsmagazine.com/features/7/7/5

My engineers are involved in a New Zealand government lock down on Chinese patent infringing LED TVs coming into the country.

The issue is that the Chinese companies change their names constantly - doesnt cost much to change your UL file to a different name to bypass customs.

Funny story - received a call from US Customs a long time ago asking me what "Lead boards" we were importing and why - "lead is hazardous!!!" I told the Customs officer whose english was pretty poor that the products were L E D Boards and not L E A D boards..."oh, my mistake" he said!!!

[YYZ]

Well, if they're from China, they're not really L E D either. They're Err E D.

Works on several levels, doesn't it?

[fishing nut]

Funny story - received a call from US Customs a long time ago asking me what "Lead boards" we were importing and why - "lead is hazardous!!!" I told the Customs officer whose english was pretty poor that the products were L E D Boards and not L E A D boards..."oh, my mistake" he said!!!

I like that. A familiar thing happened with another brilliant government official getting on a plane, I had some electrode samples with me and after 15 minuites of explaining what they were and how they worked she looked at me and asked how I can possibly keep the gas in there if one end is open. Another time going to Chicago with a vacuum gauge I was about strip searched leaving Newark because it looked like a bomb and leaving Ohare to come home as it went through the xray machine I could tell what was going to happen and he looked at me and asked what it was and said have a nice day, I've never seen one of those before. Sure do feel safe flying knowing there are crack inspectors watching out for us. Many more good ones but dont want to bore ya all.

Brought a glass file into Toronto accidentally in my briefcase, Customs or xray never picked it up, Then again I fly out of Newark, what could go wrong there?

[YYZ]

Speaking of customs... we used to get some control components from a US company and their name for one of the boards was "Brain Cell"

You can imagine why they stopped it at the border and called me wondering WTF we were sending by UPS.