Comment by gamblor956
5 hours ago
There's no listing. The story is made up.
While the general premise is true (big company will try to rip off small company), Amazon doesn't have the magical power to get around patent law and the economic penalties are fairly harsh, which is why most companies don't do it. And no war chest of tech patents is going to get Amazon around a patent in the trucking industry because the inventor of the trucking gizmo couldn't care less about whether Amazon patented the right to make Alexa speak in tongues.
It's possible, and likely, that Alibaba vendors decided to rip off the product, but again...patent law is a useful tool for those who use it, and Amazon can be held liable for the sales of infringing products on its storefronts.
Tell that to a judge after 15 years millions of dollars and an out of date product.
It seems a lot of people on HN fundamentally misunderstand how patent litigation works.
If this trucking device actually existed, and for some reason was being sold on Amazon, and the inventor had sued, he would be living large these days off the settlement.
Yes, Amazon sellers have copied products before, but those aren't Amazon. Amazon prefers to just buy the competition (see, e.g., Diapers.com and Zappos).
Amazon currently sells fake fuses that have probably already killed people.
Amazon cares just slightly more about breaking the law then they about killing people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B90_SNNbcoU
That's because criminal prosecution and product tort liability are not meaningful deterrents.
Patent litigation is a different thing entirely. The burden of proof is lower, and the payouts are higher.
To put things in perspective, Apple, Amazon, etc., have lost patent lawsuits worth hundreds of millions over trivial aspects of their devices that are just tiny parts out of thousands compromising the phone/tablet/whatever.