"Arny Krueger" wrote:




"Robert Morein" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...


http://www.miragespeakers.com/mediac...RVERRelease.pd
f

"Audio Products International confirmed today that the company's
recent successful verdict in a U.S. patent lawsuit, brought against
them by Robert W. Carver, is now final.

"On April 3, 2003, a jury of the Federal Court in Seattle invalidated

I haven't followed this, and can't get to the article.

There's also one on the Stereophile site.

Did you follow the case,

To some degree.

and is it your opinion that Carver's claims were without merit?

For sure. IMO Carver was bullying small subwoofer producers to pay him
royalties on a patent that ignored an unreasonable amount of prior art. For
example, Carver claimed that his patent covered all woofers with Xmax of a
certain amount, say 0.6 inches. (I can't remember the precise amount.) Yet
Carver himself had developed and sold speakers that incorporated woofers
with Xmax greater than 0.6 inches prior to his patent being applied for. So
had a number of major competitors. It was a ludicrous patent. The patent
office's examiners seem to have become more liberal in recent years.

AFAIK, Carver's strategy for this patent was to demand royalties from first
small, and then increasingly large speaker manufacturers. Obviously, the
small producers caved-in regardless of what they thought of the patent,
because it was cheaper to pay the royalties than to pay the lawyers to fight
it. API were the first people approached by Carver who thought they had
enough volume to justify the costs of fighting the patent.

BTW Bose has been known to take a similar approach. However, many of their
patents seem to have greater merits.

IMO API deserves a big "Thanks" from all audiophiles and speaker
manufactures for obtaining a reasonable court decision that benefits
*everybody* (but Carver!) at their own expense.

Yes they do. But, my understanding is that there were other manufacturers on
the 'defense' team.