Reverse Engineering Rights

Nah, it was Uber's confidential info, under a ferocious protective order, so it all got flushed very carefully when the case was over.

What I can tell you nonconfidentially is that Waymo's patent used an inductor + diode to recharge the few-nanofarad storage cap to +40ish volts from +24.

Their laser + GaN FET were in series across the cap, so when the FET turned off, the LC went through half a cycle of a sine wave, and the diode held it at the peak, which of course was near twice the supply.

The Uber circuit used a resistor from a +40V supply in the absolute most vanilla way you can imagine, except that there was a ferrite bead somewhere nearby (it didn't actually do anything to speak of), plus a much larger reservoir cap feeding several laser channels.

Waymo's claim was that the bead was the claimed inductor, and that Uber's resistor was 'equivalent' to Waymo's diode. (There's a 'doctrine of equivalents' in patent law, which basically says that two elements are equivalent if they do substantially the same thing in substantially the same way.)

My take on it was that if the resistor was equivalent to the diode, then a diode ought to be equivalent to the resistor. Sooo, I went on Digikey and found a very nice diode that was a fair amount better than required to do the Waymo circuit's job.

I stuck it in in place of the charging resistor, set up a video camera, and set all the lasers pulsing. (Uber's test board had a lot of comfort features for that--it was a pretty slick device actually.)

In the video, you could see two or three nearby channels pulsing at normal brightness, and the modified one shining like a supernova, until the laser or the FET turned to lava. (I'm not sure which it was.)

I also did a bunch of circuit simulations, and wrote a very restrained expert report that nonetheless got across how ridiculous Waymo's argument was. At least I think it did, because they dropped the whole patent-infringement side of the case within a few days of receiving it. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Oh I never said nobody is busy doing it. During the Soviet occupation here in Bulgaria there were huge blocks full of people reverse engineering... the products of DEC, like PDP, VAX (never finished that one I think, the regime broke down) etc. And they did reverse engineer, not just clone. Once on the open market after the regime collapsed and they could no longer be subsidized they just died. Sort of to prove the point I am making, there have been people capable of doing a lot more than reverse engineering had they had the chance.

Well this proves my point, too :). You *are* capable to forward engineer those things, aren't you.

Haven't seen it or don't remember I have. Please (re)post.

the big car manufacturer also tear apart competitor cars, down to how many welds where and how