Spring Design Sues Barnes & Noble Over Nook IP

bth writes to let us know that Barnes & Noble has been sued by a company called Spring Design, which alleges that the recently announced Nook e-book reader infringes its intellectual property. This isn't a patent troll kind of situation; rather, the claim is misappropriation of trade secrets. Spring Design claims that they have been developing a dual-screen, Android-based e-book reader since 2006, filing patents all the while; and that they showed pretty much everything to Barnes & Noble in the expectation of working together with them to bring their reader to market.

Finally, a use for the patent system.

[TravisHein]

Usually the patent system is abused by those patent foundry companies turn out patents as their 'business model' to later troll up the real companies that do the innovation. It's good to finally see a story where a legitimate company that is trying to innovate a real product, might finally be able to use their patents to get a foot hold against what would otherwise be an impossible battle against a huge company.

Re:The Alex (What B&N ripped off)

[SnarfQuest]

One of my biggest complaints with the Kindle is Amazon's insistence that it be locked down and only do what Amazon wants it to do.

You mean the inability to load your own text, html, or several other file formats? Oh wait, it already does all that.

Or are you talking about loading your own operating system into it? I hope you put the same restrictions on your TV, Microwave oven, refrigerator, washing machine, etc.. It's built to be an appliance, not a laptop. The hardware is designed for long battery life, not the ability to be a PC. The selection of programs are designed to sleep most of the time, which gives it the necessary battery life. If you want a PC, buy a PC. Why must everything be designed to be a PC? Shouldn't you also insist that your vacuum cleaner be user programmable or you will refuse to buy it?

Re:Are you sure this isn't a troll?

[Atraxen]

Almost identical in nature? You mean because there is a eink screen over a color touch screen? They look nothing alike to me.
http://www.springdesign.com/resource/jsp/products/Products.jsp [springdesign.com]
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/ [barnesandnoble.com]
I think the screen size and button placement on the Alex looks fairly awkward. Adding an advanced but power-intensive feature that's usually turned off onto something that's more efficient but more limited is a pretty standard design approach. And until this gets some full investigation (journalistic or legalistic, either is fine) we're putting the cart before the horse in passing judgment. For all we know, Spring Design really is a troll-like company, whose idea of "working closely with B&N" is having a meeting once with the company who decided not to license their stuff. Who knows yet?

Re:I'm shocked!

[Korin43]

Yes but if you want to share ideas with someone and not have them beat you to market, you can make them sign a contract saying they won't make the same device for some amount of time. In this case, they should have done that, but they didn't, so I see nothing wrong with B&N making a similar product.

It's bogus. They don't even have a patent.

[tomhudson]

Following the links FTFA to the original story:

As the first in the market to offer an e-book with full Internet browsing while reading

Nope. Any small laptop with an ebook reader got there first.

Spring Design pioneered its patent-pending dual screen design with Duet Navigator(TM) capability in 2006

There's a huge difference between "patent-pending" and "we actually have an enforceable patent."

Oh, slashdot

[dangitman]

I can always rely on slashdot for commentary where something reasonable and somewhat intelligent-sounding:

What did they steal? Ideas? Give me a break. Does "An android based E-book reader" constitute a patent worthy idea? Actually, of course it does, and that's why I for one do not see the benefit in supporting such startups in cases like these.

Quickly transforms into something straight from the mind of a drooling mental patient:

Patents need to die. Completely.

Maybe progress could be made here, if every good idea was not countered with equal amounts of crazy extremism.