Sir James Dyson is a pretty easy going guy, but he’s no fan of Samsung right now, deciding to use his considerable legal clout to take the gadget giant to court over alleged patent infringement.
Samsung is being sued by Dyson in the English High Court for its new Motion Sync Vacuum: a bagless vacuum with an independent steering mechanism the Korean gadget giant showed off at IFA in Berlin this year.
Sir James said of the Motion Sync:
“This looks like a cynical rip off by the giant Korean company Samsung. Although they are copying Dyson’s patented technology, their machine is not the same. Samsung has many patent lawyers so I find it hard not to believe that this is a deliberate or utterly reckless infringement of our patent. We have been forced to issue proceedings in the English High Court, but I would much rather invest in research to develop new technology than have to sue.”
Sir James Dyson is known for jealously defending his company’s intellectual property. , he had this to say of the need for patents:
“If you drop patents, no-one will develop anything anymore. Nobody will spend a lot of money on long-term research to make new technology work because they’ll just be copied instantly. The thing about plagiarists is that they haven’t had to have the development costs, they haven’t had the launch costs and they haven’t taken the risk. They just look to see what is successful and copy it. Clearly, if people are allowed to do that, people will just stop developing technology. That’s suicidal!
Patents are an imperfect system, though. They were designed by Henry VIII and were given a 20-year life and haven’t changed much since, but they are a system which still works.
Dyson secured his first patent back in 1986 and spent much of the last few years calling for broad patent system reform, not to choke innovation, but to safeguard its future.