Robot War Breaks Out As Roomba Maker Sues Upstart SharkNinja (bloomberg.com) 59
Roomba robotic vacuum maker IRobot Corp. is suing rival SharkNinja for copying a device of theirs and selling it at "half the price." "Shark is not even shy about being a copycat," iRobot said in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Boston, "claiming that the Shark IQ Robot offers the same iRobot technology at 'half the price of iRobot i7+'."Bloomberg reports: The company that unveiled the Roomba robotic vacuum in the early 2000s launched a product last year that takes house cleaning to a new level: It maps your home, schedules sweeps through each room, empties the dust bin itself and even knows where to resume cleaning after has returned to its base for a recharge. After being recognized by Time magazine for one of 2018's inventions of the year, IRobot Corp. says it's no accident that rival SharkNinja Operating LLC came out with a similar device a year later. [...] SharkNinja, a unit of closely held EP Midco LLC, on Friday filed a pre-emptive lawsuit in federal court in Delaware, asking the court to declare that the Shark IQ doesn't infringe six patents cited in iRobot's complaint, nor five others. IRobot had previously demanded that the Shark IQ be pulled off store shelves.
Corporate greed (Score:4, Interesting)
iRobot was too slow making it too the masses with it's sole focus on selling even more expensive products.
In Asia their products prices have never gone down significantly, so it's logical that other companies jump into this gaping hole that iRobot left for them.
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Killing competition with expensive litigation has always been the golden standard in the US, what else is new.
Hard to see how this is a "robot war", I doubt that the lawyers are roombas or sharkninjas.
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Actually, a vacuum cleaner which cleans a vacuum cleaner? That might ACTUALLY be an innovation, at least in the consumer space. Weird coming from the chuckle-heads at iRobot.
Re: Corporate greed (Score:2)
Two Sides (Score:3)
The other way of looking at it is iRobot spent a ton of money on R&D to build these things, then another company clones it at a fraction of the price as they don't have to defray the sunk cost of R&D.
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That's how it should be.
We'd all be better off. Faster innovation, quicker release to market and far fewer lawyers.
Apart from trademarks which let the public have confidence in the origin and authenticity of a product, other forms of so-called Intellectual Property need to die a death.
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/againstfinal.htm [dklevine.com]
Re: Two Sides (Score:2)
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Please slow down and THINK! If you are a company are you going to spend a huge chunk of money on R&D if the product can immediately be copied and sold as cheaply or cheaper than you can bring it to market? I think not - or, rather, I (and everybody else) wouldn't invest in your company if you did.
Intellectual property laws are absolutely essential for innovation. The company fronting the cost of the research should be able to recoup R&D investment and make a bit of profit. That incentivizes inno
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$140M on R&D (Score:2)
Yes it is all nicely bundled up in a solid quality package, but nothing that says they have spent huge R&D on it
Their income statement [yahoo.com] says they're spending $140M+ on R&D.
Re:Two Sides (Score:4, Insightful)
Assuming Shark didn't just take apart an iRobot and copied the exact same parts and software then they also have R&D costs to recover. If they developed their own software and designed their own machine (even if it looks like an iRobot it probably isn't built like one) then they have their own costs to cover.
If Shark did just copy iRobot then they should be sued for infringement. If they developed their own robotic vacuum then they should be allowed to proceed and let the two companies compete for market share.
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These guys aren't even the first, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of cheaper robot vacuum cleaners that look very similar to the iRobot ones.
It seems like iRobot just picked the one they thought they could beat in court, maybe as part of a wider shakedown/patent troll. Often trolls get an easy victory over a weak opponent to start with and then use that as a kind of unofficial precedent to pressure others into settling.
Not a patent troll (Score:3)
These guys aren't even the first, there are dozens, maybe hundreds of cheaper robot vacuum cleaners that look very similar to the iRobot ones.
It seems like iRobot just picked the one they thought they could beat in court, maybe as part of a wider shakedown/patent troll. Often trolls get an easy victory over a weak opponent to start with and then use that as a kind of unofficial precedent to pressure others into settling.
Or, y'know, maybe they sued the company that was actually infringing. A lot of the cheaper bots are based on early Roomba designs, which are no longer under patent protection.
If iRobot was truly a patent troll, winning in court wouldn't even be considered: they'd simply pick the smallest competitor who couldn't handle the legal costs and bully them into a settlement.
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There robot vacuum stayed the same for many years while competitor brought out room mapping.
They were focusing on military robots instead of keeping their product up to date.
They've been playing catch-up for years, which is weird as they're both experienced and had a good revenue stream. Playing catch-up here means they've been borrowing ideas from their competitors. (Not so wholesale as Shark, mind you.) They seem to have got a clever new thing in the form of the bin emptier. They're trying to make sur
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Re:yeah, the maid fight ensues... (Score:4, Funny)
"Maidwars" coming to a theatre near you.
Pretty sure Pornhub beat Hollywood to it.
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Why I can't bear patent stories here (Score:4, Interesting)
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Because you're assuming that both events cannot be true, but they are.
SharkNinja filed a declaratory judgment action in Delaware on Friday.
Roomba filed a complaint and motion for preliminary injunction in Massachusetts on Tuesday.
Both sides were racing to the courthouse.
Lamest “Robot War“ EVER (Score:2)
Bloomberg should be sued for false advertising... or at least their tech writer deserves an Atomic Wedgie.
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At least they are marginally autonomous, in contrast to the mere RC cars on the TV shows.
Cleaning houses is not lucrative or patentable (Score:2)
The market for things or people that can clean your house is not exactly lucrative, and cleaning generally probably isn't very patentable unless you're using novel tools, chemicals or techniques -- some kind of fancy brush, some unique surfactant or you've got some super-duper scrubbing formula based on chaos theory.
It sounds like iRobot is getting beat by good old fashioned capitalism. You can't get rich cleaning people's houses.
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You forgot the new patent style. Go through old long expired patents and add "Do it on the internet" brand new patent or "Do it with a computer" or "Do it with Software" or even add "i" to the name and never ever forget rounded corners but it's rounded corners on a computer device.
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Well, that really sucks.
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The margins are tiny, though. Dozens of vendors competing for customers and all of them worried about cheap-ass clones from China.
The global market for sex is $185 billion dollars, but that doesn't mean that selling blowjobs will make you rich.
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The global market for sex is $185 billion dollars, but that doesn't mean that selling blowjobs will make you rich.
I dunno, it worked for Melania.
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That's rich coming from irobot (Score:5, Informative)
Basically, irobot finally made a competitor to the neato vacuums, with an actual upgrade being that it empties its own dirt bin. Other than that, Neato beat them on mapping and all of that by years. And it's not like irobot didn't have a huge head start - irobot was founded in 1990 and Neato was founded in 2010. irobot had a 20 year head start and still ended up far behind the upstart.
I would also note that irobot may not have even made the technology that they're using here. They also bought Mint in 2012, which had mapping technology.
It's sad, because rather than innovating it looks like they're just going to turn into patent trolls and try to feed off others' inventions.
Re: REALLY? LOL (Score:2)
You claim to know what you're talking about, so provide the correct information. So far you provided no facts, corrected no errors, therefore supported nothing you said about others being incorrect.
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Okay, genius, go ahead and tell me where I'm factually wrong.
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I had a Neato. In fact I had two, the second as a warranty replacement for the first. The batteries in both died prematurely, which is apparently a common fault. The other issue they often had was dust blocking the lidar, again quite common if you read the forums. And man they were loud.
That was around 2014 though, they have likely improved a lot since then.
The best one I ever had was an LG. It was incredibly quiet, I thought it was broken at first because it didn't seem like the vacuum part was running at
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The D5 had some warranty repairs - LIDAR tower motor went (again common, passably easy self-fix but why bother if warranty fix available), and then a really strange situation where it would just turn back even if open space was available. That one got me a new unit which was fine until a self-inflicted problem led to repairs needed in the
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I had a Neato. In fact I had two, the second as a warranty replacement for the first. The batteries in both died prematurely, which is apparently a common fault. The other issue they often had was dust blocking the lidar, again quite common if you read the forums. And man they were loud.
That was around 2014 though, they have likely improved a lot since then.
They have improved. I bought an XV Signature Pro around 2014 when we were selling a house and wanted to keep the place as clean as possible. It was a very good move. I ended up with two of them, and eventually, one crapped out and was replaced with a D3. I later bought a D7, which I use now and love.
They've made noticeable improvements over the years, from a much larger filter and dirt bin to more power and the ability to actually store maps. It's the only iot thing in my house.
In the older models, bat
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I mean, they're loud because the vacuum is much more powerful.
I set it to run when I'm not around anyway, so MOAR POWER!
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They have. The Botvac electronics solves the reliability issues they had with the earlier series. But the software still sucked ... until very recently. Now it's fantastic. Our D3 used to regularly get stuck. Now with the addition of a couple of virtual boundaries, it never does.
The interesting thing is sudden improvement happened when Xiaomi cloned the Neato. By all reports Xiamoi made a very good vacuum. Subjectively better tha
They all suck. (Score:2)
*shows himself out.*
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*shows himself out.*
"Elvis has left the building"
The first fucking Roomba I ever saw (Score:3)
When they were first a thing. I said to myself "they need to empty themselves"
My design would have involved a ramp that the robot would drive up over a small trash bin.
The design I have seen using suction is admittedly cooler. But little tech and cost would have been involved with mine.
Of course my first design iteration would have simply required cutting a hole in floor. But I quickly realized very few would be willing to commit to such engineering for the sake of a vacuum.
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There's always the old fashioned approach. You'd just need a mechanism to lift part of a throw rug.
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Someone should make a dustbin with a vacuum built in. I've seen one with a little one at the bottom that you can sweep dust in to, but I want one where I can empty a bagless vacuum without it creating a cloud of dust.
I *hate* my Roomba! (Score:2)
I would have gotten rid of it in the first week of owning it, if the wife had let me. She loves it. Every time it gets turned on it gets stuck in corners... the same three corners every damn time (note: these aren't tricky corners--its just really really stupid). I don't know if mine is faulty or not, but it takes the updates no problem. Seriously, this "AI" they have in there could be replaced by some BASIC code written on a Commodore 64.
Re:I *hate* my Roomba! (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would have gotten rid of it in the first week of owning it, if the wife had let me. She loves it. Every time it gets turned on it gets stuck in corners... the same three corners every damn time (note: these aren't tricky corners--its just really really stupid). I don't know if mine is faulty or not, but it takes the updates no problem. Seriously, this "AI" they have in there could be replaced by some BASIC code written on a Commodore 64.
My wife keeps wanting to get one. Only problem is our house is technically a splitlevel with only 2 rooms on the ground floors separated by about 5 steps. So we would be paying hundreds of dollars for a vacuum that could only do one room at a time unless we actively moved it. Waste of money.
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As opposed to a manual vacuum cleaner which you have to 'actively move' every time you use it?
I have a split-level, too. I just got a second charging dock, and occasionally stick the Roomba downstairs for a few days.
Who troot for here (Score:2)
ShakNija - Run by SJW a-holes to the point they literally go around pressuring suppliers for personnel changes...
iRobot - rapidly becoming a patent troll.
Personally I am rooting for the lawyers here; I hope they make off with stacks of cash from both of these corps and accomplish nothing else.
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Neato: The best of the three :)
Why people dislike modern "journalists" (Score:2)
#1: I have a (mostly-dead) Roomba. My late wife bought it. She died in 1997. So, no, they did not introduce it in the early 2000's.