I mean, I read a rather detailed comment on here a few years back from someone actually in the industry, lamenting the stranglehold a particular company was inflicting on innovation.
Edit: And looking closely at that comment chain, I see you were there, questioning the patent stagnation narrative back then also. I guess you're consistent anyway.
Edit 2: Man, you have asked this question a lot. And people have given you some very detailed answers, which you never seem to respond constructively to. Care to comment on this?
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Throaway to not get sued.
E-ink, the company, holds the patents of the pigment core tech that makes "paper-like" displays possible and strongarms the display manufacturers and the users of their displays to absolute silence. Any research project or startup that comes up with a better alternative technology gets bought out or buried by their lawyers ASAP.
E-ink don't make the display themselves, they make the e-ink film, filled with their patented pigment particles and sell it to display manufacturers who package the film in glass and a TFT layer and add a driver interface chip, all of which are proprietary AF and unless you're the size of Amazon, forget about getting any detailed datasheets about how to correctly drive their displays to get sharp images.
In my previous company we had to reverse engineer their waveforms in order to build usable products even though we were buying quite a lot of displays.
With so much control over the IP and the entire supply chain and due to the broken nature of the patent system, they're an absolute monopoly and have no incentive to lower prices or to bring any innovations to the market and are a textbook example of what happens to technology when there is zero competition.
So, when you see the high prices of e-paper gadgets, don't blame the manufacturers, as they're not price gouging, blame E-ink, as their displays make up the bulk of the BOM.
Tough, some of their tech is pretty dope. One day E-ink sent over a 32" 1440p prototype panel with 32 shades of B&W to show off. My God, was the picture gorgeous and sharp. I would have loved to have it as a PC monitor so I tried building an HDMI interface controller for it with an FPGA but failed due to a lack of time and documentation. Shame, although not a big loss as an estimated cost for that was near the five figure ballpark and the current consumption was astronomical, sometimes triggering the protection of the power supply on certain images.
> Which you never seem to respond constructively to. Care to comment on this?
It's impossible to respond -- it just makes assertions that are impossible to verify, and without throwing any sources.
The only thing I can verify myself is that waveform data from e-ink is overzealously copyrighted and protected, to the detriment of OSS projects, but this exclusively applies to e-Ink technology itself, not competitors.
I don't work in the display industry, but I do think that e-ink just sucks enough by itself that one does not need to invent any type of outlandish conspiracy about how a company would boycott itself in order to limit their market share.
Every single time I have ever seen a color e-Ink display it has been absolutely disappointing. Both Triton and Kaleido were low-contrast, gray-ish blurry messes (and Kaleido is so little an improvement over Triton it makes me wonder what exactly has improved in the last decade). ACeP is the only color technology which really stands out somewhat (this panel, by the way), but it is limited by the extremely low refresh rate and color resolution (we are talking multiple tens of seconds to refresh). And as for the core grayscale market, most people would be better served by a memory reflective LCD, since it is visually indistinguishable from e-Ink, similar or even better contrast, much faster refresh rate, and actually better in average power consumption for most applications except maybe price tags (since e-Ink sucks a lot of power when refreshing).
The fact that not only e-Ink really fails to thrive but that they do have competition which thrives (e.g. smartwatches like Garmin use transflective LCDs that are color & exactly as viewable in sunlight as e-Ink, perhaps more) should also put an stop to the idea that they somehow exert control over the low-power, daylight-viewable display market.
> It's impossible to respond -- it just makes assertions that are impossible to verify, and without throwing any sources.
I have to say this is ridiculous. You're making a claim that patents are blocking progress. When I ask which patent and for details, you're response is that I'm making assertions that can't be verified. That's exactly what I'm saying about your comment.
I mean the .fw/.ihex files, you have really not seen them?
They are not redistributable, and eInk DMCAs attempts at hosting them; you have to get from your existing firmware. It's not simple to just reverse them since they vary on the temperature. I mean, there is now free code for driving most eink controllers, but not free replacements for these files, as far as I know.
> I mean the .fw/.ihex files, you have really not seen them?
Not from E Ink. .fw is from Freescale. Never seen any .ihex E Ink waveform data file. Could you point to an actual example since you seem to imply it is very common?
> They are not redistributable, and eInk DMCAs attempts at hosting them;
> And people have given you some very detailed answers, which you never seem to respond constructively to.
Could you provide a link to where you see that? I disagree with that characterization.
I should also point out that still, even in this thread, again, no one has been able to tell the rest of us (who want evidence we can verify) what specific patent they're talking about. Instead the same old answer, of "all of their patents" comes out. This is the same as saying IBM patents are blocking progress in the software industry.
Of course, the throwaway post that I already said was clearly misinformed at many levels is cited as if it was gospel evidence of patent misbehavior.
> In my previous company we had to reverse engineer their waveforms in order to build usable products even though we were buying quite a lot of displays.
Yes, this is obviously true. You realize it is the equivalent of saying, I bought a Samsung LCD and then I wanted to change the LCD's internal drive voltages and drive circuit waveforms and Samsung didn't help me do that. And how is that in any way related to patents? I asked for evidence backing your claim that patents are blocking progress in the electrophoretic display industry. Would you care to answer that instead of deflecting?
What do you mean by "last I saw"? You are working in the display industry?