foxman

http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2.../emw186804.htm

Beverly Hills, CA (PRWEB) December 8, 2004 -- Frank Weyer, a patent attorney and inventor of U.S. Patent No. 5,975,728 issued on Nov. 2, 1999 announced today that he has sued Ford Motor Company for patent infringement. According to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California as Civil Action No. 04-08630 CBM (SHx), the "MyColor" TM option that is part of the interior upgrade package on the highly touted 2005 Ford Mustang infringes Mr. Weyer's patent for "Method and Apparatus for Providing User Selectable Multi-Color Instrument Panel Illumination." Mr. Weyer conceived of his invention while a graduate student at M.I.T. After the U.S. Patent Office granted the patent in 1999, Mr. Weyer sent a letter to Ford and other automobile manufacturers offering to license his invention. Ford did not respond.

Now, five years later, the new Ford Mustang features a user color-changeable instrument panel lighting system Ford calls "MyColor" that Mr. Weyer claims infringes his patent. Mr. Weyer is seeking damages and an injunction that would prevent Ford from selling or delivering any new Mustangs with the "MyColor" option. Mr. Weyer, filed the complaint on October 19, 2004. Prior to formally serving the complaint, Mr. Weyer contacted Ford, and offered to reach a cooperative resolution. Ford initially requested additional time to respond, which Mr. Weyer granted. After two months without a substantive response from Ford, according to court rules, Mr. Weyer was required to formally serve Ford with the complaint.

Mr. Weyer has informed Ford's in-house counsel that he is preparing a preliminary injunction motion that he intends to file in the near future. The preliminary injunction, if granted, would immediately bar Ford from offering for sale, selling, manufacturing or delivering any 2005 Mustangs with the infringing MyColor feature. That could prove to be a disappointment for Ford, which has launched a massive media push behing the 2005 Mustang, hoping that sales of the Mustang will drive its passenger car sales as a whole.

SilverEIGHT

I wonder if that has any effect on the RX8's selection of Red or White lighting or is that something else?

rx8wannahave

If that is true...FORD did it again, gosh...who runs that place? They are in the court room more than in the motor mag's...LOL, but I'm probably wrong about that.

The options price is not worth it anyway, just pay the man who made it...as he deserves, if his story is true!

Pkskull77

I would be suprised if the court granted the injunction, the harm to Ford would far outweight the harm to the plaintiff. They would probably prefer awarding damages per call sold with the feature. In any case, if the court finds infringment on his patent, he is probably going to make a ton of money.

aggietiff28

Prolly not. Lots of cars have a "bright" or "dim" option. That is what I am assuming that this car would say it has. The Mustang offers many more colors. I went to look at one and the salesman showed me how it could change from yellow, to red, to blue, to green, etc. I don't remember all the colors, but there were many more options than dim red vs. bright white. I think we are in the clear on this one.

aggietiff28

125 different color backgrounds - from Ford website. That's really kinda cool. I would love to be able to match my car to what I am wearing/feeling etc.

mikeb

ricers have been doing this option of whatever for years


who cares

Sociopath

That's Right, WTFC! There's always people suing other people about anything and everything. Its another way of saying, "how can I tap in on some of that profit you made, which clearly doesn't belong to me."

RXE16T

Sounds like a '****' feature to me. :p

Honestly, I reckon it would be entertaining for all of about 5 minutes before the novelty wears off....... I haven't touched the dimmer switch on the 8 since I bought it.

staticlag

I saw a new silver mustang driving on monday. I'm not a big fan of the retro.

Let the floodgates be open!

expo1

Well maybe this guy saw the success the inventor of intermittent windshield wipers had and wants to follow suite. The wiper guy is a multimillionaire from suing all the carmakers.

http://www.me.utexas.edu/~me179/topi...3article5.html

SilverEIGHT

You only patent something if you have the gonads to back it up with attorneys. If you are the first to capitalize on an "invention" then you are the lucky one. Welcome to capitalism! Just because ricers have been doing it for a long time doesn't mean they are the smart ones. The one guy that drew it up and put it in writing is the one guy that deserves the credit because he put his money where his mouth is. I say let him reap the benefits and more power to him. I wish I could have been the one to make such money on such a small patent. Go dude go!

Rasputin

Problem is people will just patent anything, even systems that any engineer can design by putting existing bits together when asked to find a solution to an engineering problem. Only real novelty or technology should be patent-able, not the work of putting existing components together.

Take the electric supercharger for example. Loads of patents on it, one of which patents the fact that a guy coupled a centrifugal compressor with an electric motor : what a f***ing genious he is! I never had thought of that ...

...before the age of 16!!

Another one patents the fact that the intake air comes round the electric motor for cooling. That took me a couple of hours to figure out before ruling it out for packaging / intake air temp reasons.
And again another shows how to use MOSFETs to control the stuff. I'm not even a, electronic engineer and I designed something similar before reading the patent.

I think the patent office takes anything in (and the money associated with it), but it's up to the patentee to prove the content of his patent could not be found by an average engineering design work.

On a side note, all car manufacturers get these kind of lawsuit threats every day I guess. This guy sueing Ford things he might get easy dosh just because it's going to be much cheaper for Ford to buy him a house than going into court...

zoom44

he patented it . end of story. Ford should have before and should right now pay the man. even if they gave him only 10 bucks for every one sold with this option he's going to be rich. pay the man and move on.

SHOWOFF

It's a royal pain in the *** to operate. You have to individually adjust the R G B in the color mix. There is NOTHING easy about operating the color selection menu.

Ford gets hit left and right for all kinds of ghey *** ****.

They have had to change the name of several cars 2 or 3 times lately.

SilverEIGHT

The company I work with has 28 existing patents and more in the works. We do not engineer anything without doing complete research to stay out of trouble. It's part of being in the R&D and engineering business. Ford added a feature without regards to a patent. They are at fault.

zoom44

and you would have thought they would have learned by now. i assume you are including the GT40 in there since they weren't allowed to call the knew Ford GT that since somehow they allowed someone else to copyright the name and then didnt want to pay him for use of it. if they are not careful someone is going to copyright Mustang and then what will they do. its their own fault.

Gambit

Futura was one of the others they had to change - to Fusion. Pep Boys already owned the name for tires

dpm

Chances are ford has more and BETTER attorneys, Im pretty sure they will find a way out this lawsuit also.