jfm
Well-Known Member
Thanks MeaCulpa for that link
This doc is a good example what I meant by "fancy footwork" https://register.epo.org/application?documentId=ESE850QN6386FI4&number=EP09171591&lng=en&npl=false. It is CMC's argument back to the patent examiner, when the examiner was saying "prima facie this doesn't look like a new invention". See paras 3.3 (people have invented electric stabilisers for use underway but CMC's stabs work at anchor so we'd like a patent please for a new application of old technology), 3.7 (claiming the use of rotary encoder is an invention even though others use a rotary encoder obviously and have done for years) and the last sentence of 3.9 (2nd half of sentence is non sequitur following the first half of the sentence) and form your own view on whether CMC were "on the ropes" but had a good lawyer to defend against the claim they didn't invent anything new
It seems (I picked this up only from chatting to people) there is a widely held view that the patent will be revoked, and anyway because of the extensive prior art CMC's claims against anyone else using electric motors will result in no damages, and that's why Humphree and Naiad are already in the electric market. AIUI the hearing on the patent thing is imminent (couple of months) so we'll know the answer on the patent thing soon anyway
Just to be clear, the patent dispute is ONLY over the use of electric motors as a general concept. It is not over any other propriety aspects of CMC's product, and not over their particular electric motors or gearboxes. Electric motors actuation as a general concept is important because when you want to stabilise small boats you have different challenges from stabilising big boats, and electric motors can help. You cant just make smaller stabilisers for smaller boats: as I said the other day when commenting on Dave Marsh's article in the current edition of MBY, you have to deal with much faster roll periods. My boat (24m) has a roll period around 4.5seconds but when you get down to say 15m boats you find roll periods of perhaps 2 seconds and with rolls that fast on stiff boats you need very fast accelerations and reactions to inputs, and a servo motor has less softness than hydraulics and can react faster, hence it is in principle a better solution on a small boat. This is much less relevant on bigger boats, though of course electric actuation offers other advantages, like easier installation and easier retrofit, to offset the noise downside
The challenges with electric actuators are noise plus getting the height of the actuator as small as possible (otherwise in a small boat they intrude into accommodation space). Both those things are less challenging in bigger boats, where the advantages of electric are arguably less relevant anyway. On height, Humphree seem to have done a good job. On noise, see the video below - this is Humphree's installation on demo a couple of weeks ago in Cannes. These things are under the floor of your master cabin and you're trying to sleep. Not only is it loud, it's also an annoying type of noise. Alas current generations of off the shelf gearboxes make this type of noise and doesn't matter for their target industrial applications markets. The video below is Humphree, and imho CMC's are a fair bit quieter, but not a life-changing amount, and CMC still have the annoying back-and-forth quality of the noise. I don't know about Naiad's noise levels. Obviously good hydraulics are way quieter than this, as are gyros, even including genset noise (which is a more pleasant hum). The engineering advances we need for small boat stabilisation include a reduction of this gearbox noise and the forthcoming competition (hopefully!) between all the serious stabiliser players should help on this aspect). All imho.
This doc is a good example what I meant by "fancy footwork" https://register.epo.org/application?documentId=ESE850QN6386FI4&number=EP09171591&lng=en&npl=false. It is CMC's argument back to the patent examiner, when the examiner was saying "prima facie this doesn't look like a new invention". See paras 3.3 (people have invented electric stabilisers for use underway but CMC's stabs work at anchor so we'd like a patent please for a new application of old technology), 3.7 (claiming the use of rotary encoder is an invention even though others use a rotary encoder obviously and have done for years) and the last sentence of 3.9 (2nd half of sentence is non sequitur following the first half of the sentence) and form your own view on whether CMC were "on the ropes" but had a good lawyer to defend against the claim they didn't invent anything new
It seems (I picked this up only from chatting to people) there is a widely held view that the patent will be revoked, and anyway because of the extensive prior art CMC's claims against anyone else using electric motors will result in no damages, and that's why Humphree and Naiad are already in the electric market. AIUI the hearing on the patent thing is imminent (couple of months) so we'll know the answer on the patent thing soon anyway
Just to be clear, the patent dispute is ONLY over the use of electric motors as a general concept. It is not over any other propriety aspects of CMC's product, and not over their particular electric motors or gearboxes. Electric motors actuation as a general concept is important because when you want to stabilise small boats you have different challenges from stabilising big boats, and electric motors can help. You cant just make smaller stabilisers for smaller boats: as I said the other day when commenting on Dave Marsh's article in the current edition of MBY, you have to deal with much faster roll periods. My boat (24m) has a roll period around 4.5seconds but when you get down to say 15m boats you find roll periods of perhaps 2 seconds and with rolls that fast on stiff boats you need very fast accelerations and reactions to inputs, and a servo motor has less softness than hydraulics and can react faster, hence it is in principle a better solution on a small boat. This is much less relevant on bigger boats, though of course electric actuation offers other advantages, like easier installation and easier retrofit, to offset the noise downside
The challenges with electric actuators are noise plus getting the height of the actuator as small as possible (otherwise in a small boat they intrude into accommodation space). Both those things are less challenging in bigger boats, where the advantages of electric are arguably less relevant anyway. On height, Humphree seem to have done a good job. On noise, see the video below - this is Humphree's installation on demo a couple of weeks ago in Cannes. These things are under the floor of your master cabin and you're trying to sleep. Not only is it loud, it's also an annoying type of noise. Alas current generations of off the shelf gearboxes make this type of noise and doesn't matter for their target industrial applications markets. The video below is Humphree, and imho CMC's are a fair bit quieter, but not a life-changing amount, and CMC still have the annoying back-and-forth quality of the noise. I don't know about Naiad's noise levels. Obviously good hydraulics are way quieter than this, as are gyros, even including genset noise (which is a more pleasant hum). The engineering advances we need for small boat stabilisation include a reduction of this gearbox noise and the forthcoming competition (hopefully!) between all the serious stabiliser players should help on this aspect). All imho.
