Hello,
Recently we’ve entered a new market for car adapters and batteries for the Microsoft surface tablets.
They also have a magnetic cable that magnetically holds itself to the the computer just like Apple’s magsafe connector. But as you know Apple has a patent on it and it would be very interesting to see if Microsoft will also be granted a patent on their magnetic connector. However…
We’ve read though the patent claims and here’s our opinion at this point.
Apple has sued other companies NOT because of magnetic connector itself. There are a lot of articles online that incorrectly states claims to the magsafe connector as being apples but fails to mention about one crucial item. That magnetic connector has been around for years (see deep fryers), what Apple’s claim is that there is a little chip inside the magsafe head that ‘talks’ to the MacBooks, when it does the proper handshaking, it’ll then ‘turn on’ to charge the MacBooks.
Microsofts patent claims (has not been issued yet) are based around data communication in addition to power. The claim appears to be centered around the center pin which would be optical data communications. There is NO chip inside the magnetic connector like Apple’s that tell the device to charge. Furthermore, in the recent incarnation of the Surface tablet, the center pin is NOT optical! So, the bottom line is that it’s just a magnetic cable that holds the pins to the tablet, just like the deep fryers currently on the market.
So based on this, we don’t think Apple will sue Microsoft because Microsoft is not using a chip that tells the laptop to charge. They are using existing technology and in our opinion has no grounds for infringement unlike Apple where they had sued other companies who used their unlicensed chip inside the magsafe tip.
That comes to us, based on this we are using both Genuine Microsoft cables, and third party magnetic connectors for our car adapters and external batteries. We are offering both 3rd party car adapter and Genuine Microsoft car adapter kits as indicated in our store page. The batteries are currently shipping with the 3rd party magnetic cables only. We will in coming days offer genuine Microsoft magnetic cables as well. If you wish to have it, please email us!
Why? Because although we think there is no patent issues like there were with Apple’s Magsafe (reason for why we are offering Genuine Apple magsafe only) is that there really no way to know for sure either 1) Microsoft is granted their Patent, 2) Apple sues Microsoft for some other claims, or 3) until Microsoft contacts us.
As mentioned in a prior blog post, we do not believe in copying other people IP, we ourselves have applied for patents, and it would be very unfair for someone to copy us. Also, patent claims can be very subjective in the ways they are written, and a lot if times it takes a team of lawyers to hash it out before anyone knows.
Until then, we’re going to try to keep as open possible and to an extent let you choose.
Thanks,
Mikegyver.com
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