Phanteks Puts Out First Response to Patent Infringement Lawsuit by Lian Li

[btarunr]

Phanteks put out its first statement in response to reports about Lian Li filing a patent infringement lawsuit against it. Lian Li alleges that Phanteks D30 RGB line of compound fans for radiators infringe upon a design patent held by the company, and that Lian Li Uni Fan series implement the original design defined in the patent. In particular, the controversy is around the design of the mechanism that lets you daisy-chain individual fans without cables. In its defense, Phanteks says that during the development of the D30 RGB series, its lawyers were duly consulted to look for IP conflicts. The company stated that it will face the legal challenge and is confident to prove that its product is not in infringement of Lian Li IP. The statement by Phanteks follows.

We at Phanteks can confirm the filing of the patent infringement suit filed by a fellow PC enthusiast brand. We want to inform the community that our legal team is and has always properly handled any legal issue or communication that has arose.

From the start of the Phanteks D30 fan development, we set out to design an original product that innovates to provide new solutions to PC enthusiasts. We have consulted with patent lawyers during the development and prior to the announcement of the D30 fans and the fans were not found to infringe on the claims in the patent. Phanteks D30 fans are an original idea and have been issued patents in multiple countries to date.

We value and respect valid and enforceable IP rights and are confident that the result of this legal matter will confirm there is no infringement. We will continue our mission to serve the PC community by creating unique and innovative solutions.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[Vya Domus]

Always lovely to see corporations battle over basic designs that shouldn't have been able to be patented in the first place.

 

[Frick]

Always lovely to see corporations battle over basic designs that shouldn't have been able to be patented in the first place.

Is daisy chaining fans without cabling an obvious thing though?

 

[Vya Domus]

Is daisy chaining fans without cabling an obvious thing though?

Daisy chaining anything without cables is an obvious thing to do, you either use a cable or not, even if it wasn't obvious should that really be the only criteria for patenting something ?

 

[big_glasses]

Is daisy chaining fans without cabling an obvious thing though?

yes. It's just taking inspiration from other products. lotta product that can connect to each other without cabling
Samsungs the wall
solar roof tiles
nanoleaf lights

 

[Frick]

It's a 2020 patent, that sorta kills it yeah. I was imagining something older.

 

[Fungi]

Patent legitimacy aside, if it were so obvious then why didn't similar products launch earlier?

 

[Chrispy_]

I hope Phanteks win. It certainly looks like they considered Lian-Li's patent before going ahead with their product launches:

As someone mentioned in the original news article, enforcing this dumb patent would result in another industry-crippling Asetek patent-trolling incident; I'm 100% confident that the stupid Asetek patent is why AIOs are mostly all rubbish; There's no reason for them to be so much worse than custom loops but they are all so far behind even an cheap custom loop that it's not funny.

This is another patent for "a rectangle with rounded corners"

 

[Assimilator]

Patent legitimacy aside, if it were so obvious then why didn't similar products launch earlier?

I see your stupid and fallacious question and raise a correspondingly stupid and fallacious counter-question:

Why has nobody patented "breathing oxygen", even though it's obviously been used for thousands of years?

 

[Chrispy_]

Patent legitimacy aside, if it were so obvious then why didn't similar products launch earlier?

Cost.

The market has historically shunned overpriced garbage, but the ARGBLED blight plaguing the DIY PC market seems to have carved itself a niche of "exceptionally expensive proprietary nonsense with absolutely massive profit margins" A small percentage of people will happily fork out a $300-500 premium for a few rainbow fans, a controller hub, and some janky software that's riddled with feature-bloat, impacts system performance, and is universally criticised by reviewers and Youtube streamers alike.

PWM-sharing and daisy-chaining have been around for a long time, and the spaghetti-mess ARGBLED created has been gagging for a solution for some time now - something a few companies have solvedin their own similar, and rather obvious way. Most of them are just borrowing the pad/connector system that we've had for fans in servers for over 20 years.

It just so happens that Lian-Li are the ones trying to patent-troll the rest of the market this time and they deserve all the backlash that's coming their way.

 

[kapone32]

Cost.

The market has historically shunned overpriced garbage, but the ARGBLED blight plaguing the DIY PC market seems to have carved itself a niche of "exceptionally expensive proprietary nonsense with absolutely massive profit margins" A small percentage of people will happily fork out a $300-500 premium for a few rainbow fans, a controller hub, and some janky software that's riddled with feature-bloat, impacts system performance, and is universally criticised by reviewers and Youtube streamers alike.

PWM-sharing and daisy-chaining have been around for a long time, and the spaghetti-mess ARGBLED created has been gagging for a solution for some time now - something a few companies have solvedin their own similar, and rather obvious way. Most of them are just borrowing the pad/connector system that we've had for fans in servers for over 20 years.

It just so happens that Lian-Li are the ones trying to patent-troll the rest of the market this time and they deserve all the backlash that's coming their way.

Looks like the AIO issue again.

 

[ViperXZ]

Typical, in the fan / case space there's only a few innovators and a lot of companies that only copy others work, the worst being Thermal Take who barely do anything original.

And again, if it was so obvious why do they suddenly start to produce this thing, after Lian Li invented it? It's easy to talk, less easy to create something. It's easy to understand someone else's thoughts, it's harder to have these thoughts yourself. People here are being smart, but it's not smart to downplay Lian Li's right on the patent.

"PWM-sharing and daisy-chaining have been around for a long time"

Not really, the design Lian Li invented was first seen after Lian Li invented it, it's a streamlined and easy to use design nobody else though of before, Jayz2cents, not necessarily the best youtuber, but he celebrated it back then as an innovation.

 

[Athlonite]

Unfortunately I don't see Lian - Li having a leg to stand on here. The connector is quite different from that used by Lian - Li's UNI fan style connector
The Phanteks D30 uses a separate bridge connector to connect it's fans together
The Lian - Li UNI fans use a finger/pad connector that's built into the fan
I have Uni fans and looked at the D30's connector and I can say they're not the same

 

[Chrispy_]

Unfortunately I don't see Lian - Li having a leg to stand on here. The connector is quite different from that used by Lian - Li's UNI fan style connector
The Phanteks D30 uses a separate bridge connector to connect it's fans together
The Lian - Li UNI fans use a finger/pad connector that's built into the fan
I have Uni fans and looked at the D30's connector and I can say they're not the same

I hope you're right but Phanteks aren't rolling over so this will go to court and the wrong combination of jury/judge/lawyers can land us with the same stupidity that set a precedent for Apple's patent on shapes with rounded corners, or Asetek's pump on the waterblock patent.

Patent law is misused abusively more often than it effectively protects genuine innovation, so don't expect common sense and justice to prevail because it so often doesn't...

 

[ymdhis]

Is daisy chaining fans without cabling an obvious thing though?

I could chain electrical components on my Lego Technic sets in the 90s. It was an obvious thing to do.

 

[Chrispy_]

I could chain electrical components on my Lego Technic sets in the 90s. It was an obvious thing to do.

If it's similar enough to Lian-Li's pogo-pin implementation, all Phanteks has to do to get the case thrown out is submit something like that as "prior art", invalidating Lian-Li's patent in the process.

 

[docnorth]

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

 

[maxfly]

What Lian Li expects to gain from this is beyond me.

 

[Chrispy_]

What Lian Li expects to gain from this is beyond me.

Presumably legal precedent to milk royalties out of all other fan manufacturers making chainable fans.

They've chosen to go after Phanteks, presumably because Phanteks are small and inexperienced in legal fights. They should be going after ThermalTake who have completely ripped off Lian Li's design in just about every way possible, but Thermaltake are notoriously litigious asshats with a very strong legal team and deep pockets.

 

[Dr_b_]

Oh the irony of a chinese company suing another company for patent infringement......

 

[maxfly]

Presumably legal precedent to milk royalties out of all other fan manufacturers making chainable fans.

They've chosen to go after Phanteks, presumably because Phanteks are small and inexperienced in legal fights. They should be going after ThermalTake who have completely ripped off Lian Li's design in just about every way possible, but Thermaltake are notoriously litigious asshats with a very strong legal team and deep pockets.

I thought they filed suit against them as well? Or was that just more rumour millage?

 

[Hxx]

What Lian Li expects to gain from this is beyond me.

money. what else

 

[maxfly]

money. what else

I was being a bit facetious. They aren't likely to win any litigation...more likely to gain loads of bad press for trying to pull an Asetek.

 

[Chrispy_]

I thought they filed suit against them as well? Or was that just more rumour millage?

I don't think so, and a quick web search says no, but I also cant' be 100% sure.

 

[RandomWan]

Presumably legal precedent to milk royalties out of all other fan manufacturers making chainable fans.

They've chosen to go after Phanteks, presumably because Phanteks are small and inexperienced in legal fights. They should be going after ThermalTake who have completely ripped off Lian Li's design in just about every way possible, but Thermaltake are notoriously litigious asshats with a very strong legal team and deep pockets.

I thought they filed suit against them as well? Or was that just more rumour millage?

Lian Li is also suing Thermaltake over daisy-chain RGB fan design - KitGuru

This week, it came to light that Lian Li filed a lawsuit against Phanteks over the design of its D30

www.kitguru.net

They are going after them as well. If they file against Corsair too, this is just going to be more Apple level patent trolling over rounded corners on a rectangle. I hope they lose on all fronts.