Gigabyte accused of some idea stealing.

[stipuledfatcat]

 

Summary

Gigabyte may have built a very sleek prototype using a motherboard and case that routes all the cables behind the motherboard but it looks quite similar to a patent filed by Maingear back in 2011. Maingear CEO, Wallace Santos, tried to get major board partners, including Gigabyte, to adopt the design but was unable to do so due to it requiring a new case design to go with the new motherboard. Although if they did steal the design Wallace appears to be happy in a way as it could influence other companies to adopt the design as a new standard.

 

Quotes

Quote

Gigabyte relocated them all to the backside of the motherboard so that storage, power, cooling and other cables can be more easily routed behind the motherboard tray. This facilitates a cleaner looking build, at least in the front side, and frees the main motherboard compartment of cables that could possible interfere with the flow of air over toasty components.

 

My thoughts

The design looks really nice, no mess of cables and no need to worry about the mustard and ketchup cables ruining the aesthetic of the build. I do doubt the few short lengths of cables that end up poking through to the front side of motherboard would do much to reduce airflow, at least not more than having minimal area for air to enter the case from the front. It's an interesting design standard which would be cool to see in my opinion but would add some extra compatibility issues between motherboards and cases. In the end I guess it would come down to consumer adoption if Gigabyte or anyone else actually releases the product.

 

Sources

https://hothardware.com/news/gigabyte-maingear-patent-project-stealth-pc

[DoctorNick]

As fa as I can see Gigabytes design is very different from Maingear 

[Roswell]

Maingear's patent was for back mounted ports. Gigabyte is seemingly using edge mounted ports and covering some of them with a piece of plastic, obscuring others with the PSU shroud.

 

Different method of execution, not to mention that edge mounted ports on motherboards have been a thing for decades!  If Maingear thinks their patent was infringed upon because Gigabyte is including a piece of plastic and a PSU shroud, they're out of their element.

[Somerandomtechyboi]

Is there any actual use other than just aesthetics aka not useful? If not then why even bother?

 

And having to build custom cases for these is gonna be pretty expensive at first unless you build your own case, also some ppl just dont wanna swap cases just for some dumb aesthetic when their old case works just fine

[Jeppes]

You could patent back mounted ports? Silly world.

[Arika]

Honestly, something like this shouldn't even be patentable...

[Fasterthannothing]

I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm siding with Gigabyte on this one.  Besides the fact that being able to patent where a connector is placed being the dumbest thing ever these are totally different.

[Doobeedoo]

Can't see this as stealing or even how it can be patented but yeah.

Anyway, the cleaner the looks the better. Always good to see refinements like this.

[stipuledfatcat]

11 hours ago, huilun02 said:

Title suggests there is a problem. Is there?

For Gigabyte there might be if Maingear decides to try and uphold the patent, which I doubt would happen as the cost lawyers for both sides would be substantial and Maingear benefits more if the design becomes a standard as it allows them to make cleaner builds since they are unlikely to go into the board manufacturing market so they would need others to do it for them. Honestly it seems more of a PR thing rather than a patent issue the more I think about it. They might be a bit salty that they weren't able to be one of the first to market with the idea, with some sort of partnership with Gigabyte, especially as it appears that the article states the connectors are all on the back while some of the renderings show at least the 24pin being edge mounted. Which would make the lawsuit hard to win for Maingear. In the end it all depends on how the CEO of Maingear decides to play it but if lawyers get involved I would assume any monetary gains Maingear could make from a lawsuit or a settlement would be small compared to loosing a lot of favour with a company as big as Gigabyte.

 

And yes many silly things can be patented as long as they meet the very small list of criteria. Which the main ones being:

- Novel idea ( Basically an idea that is not public knowledge.)

- Does not infringe on other ideas

- Would not be considered by a laymen ( Basically could someone with minimal knowledge have thought of the idea)

There are a few more criteria but those are kind of the main ones to consider. Otherwise the idea can be anything really, from a technology to a process to a pretty looking design for something ( does not necessarily need to be utilitarian in nature). 

[IkeaGnome]

5 minutes ago, stipuledfatcat said:

For Gigabyte there might be if Maingear decides to try and uphold the patent,

What part of this would violate a patent that shouldn't have been able to be gotten in the first place? Maingear rear mounted connectors. Gigabyte is using all edge mounted connectors, except the 8 pins. The edge mounted connectors that you see that Maingear used? If you read through the patent, those are Rear IO. It's the exact opposite of how the patent looks.

We could also talk about how funny the patent drawing is. 2 20 pin connectors. One of which looks like it's being used as a 24 pin from the PSU. Floppy cables? The patent is from 2011 and shows. 

 

How dare Gigabyte look at changing stuff around!

Good PR for Maingear though. 

[Middcore]

Ultimately the right or wrong of it won't matter. Gigabyte is a multi-billion dollar conglomerate and Maingear is like ~30 people in New Jersey. They'd go bankrupt paying lawyers well before there was any resolution even if they had a winning case.

[stipuledfatcat]

20 hours ago, Roswell said:

Maingear's patent was for back mounted ports. Gigabyte is seemingly using edge mounted ports and covering some of them with a piece of plastic, obscuring others with the PSU shroud.

7 hours ago, IkeaGnome said:

What part of this would violate a patent that shouldn't have been able to be gotten in the first place?

Actually looking at the images a bit closer the Gigabyte board appears to be rear mounted but has the connector facing the edge of the board. So a correction to my earlier post about the connector being edge mounted which appears to be false based on the image. Yes the figure in the patent might look different from the renderings but both seem to have rear mounted connectors. Based on the patent claims it looks like Maingear could potentially have a case, no pun intended. 

 

 

The patent, US20120287569A1 - Motherboard and Case with Hidden Internal Connectors, if anyone is interested in reading the exact claims.

[Shreyas1]

Probably just convergent evolution tbh. Though its nice to see maingear's response to it, I mean after all they probably aren't going to use that patent anyways. Hope more people had their mindset

[Stahlmann]

I have no problem if someone "steals" a 10 year old idea that never got to the market.

[Middcore]

3 minutes ago, Stahlmann said:

I have no problem if someone "steals" a 10 year old idea that never got to the market.

 

Again, Maingear is a tiny firm in New Jersey, LMG may actually have more employees than they do. The article says they approached companies like Gigabyte about partnering to bring it to market but they didn't display interest at the time, which makes this look 10x worse and much harder to argue "Eh, convergent evolution."  A cynical person would say Gigabyte realized there was no reason for them to buy the idea from Maingear or partner with them when they could just use the idea and dare the mom-n'-pop company to do anything about it. 

 

Maingear not having the manufacturing resources to make PC motherboards doesn't make it right for one of the handful of companies in the world that actually do have those resources to simply appropriate their idea without compensation or credit. Stopping somebody who's short on ideas but long on capital from just ripping off people who actually invent stuff is kind of the whole reason the patent system exists. But making the system actually do what it's supposed to requires money itself, so realistically there's no way Maingear can fight this. 

 

In the end though, I would bet against Gigabyte actually bringing this idea to market either except maybe as a very limited line of high-priced prebuilts. 

[williamcll]

I'll let the lawyers decide.

[Middcore]

1 minute ago, williamcll said:

I'll let the lawyers money decide.

 

FTFY. 

 

[PocketNerd]

Didn't LTT prove that cable layout didn't really matter for airflow?

 

Cause that'd make the rationale for this design change moot.

[Stahlmann]

37 minutes ago, Middcore said:

 

Again, Maingear is a tiny firm in New Jersey, LMG may actually have more employees than they do. The article says they approached companies like Gigabyte about partnering to bring it to market but they didn't display interest at the time, which makes this look 10x worse and much harder to argue "Eh, convergent evolution."  A cynical person would say Gigabyte realized there was no reason for them to buy the idea from Maingear or partner with them when they could just use the idea and dare the mom-n'-pop company to do anything about it. 

 

Maingear not having the manufacturing resources to make PC motherboards doesn't make it right for one of the handful of companies in the world that actually do have those resources to simply appropriate their idea without compensation or credit. Stopping somebody who's short on ideas but long on capital from just ripping off people who actually invent stuff is kind of the whole reason the patent system exists. But making the system actually do what it's supposed to requires money itself, so realistically there's no way Maingear can fight this. 

 

In the end though, I would bet against Gigabyte actually bringing this idea to market either except maybe as a very limited line of high-priced prebuilts. 

I think if Gigabyte would have any "malicious intent" by stealing the idea they would have brought this to market years ago, not waiting 10 years to do it.

[Middcore]

3 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

Didn't LTT prove that cable layout didn't really matter for airflow?

 

Cause that'd make the rationale for this design change moot.

 

The real rationale here is purely aesthetic. 

[Kisai]

On 12/17/2021 at 1:29 AM, Somerandomtechyboi said:

Is there any actual use other than just aesthetics aka not useful? If not then why even bother?

 

And having to build custom cases for these is gonna be pretty expensive at first unless you build your own case, also some ppl just dont wanna swap cases just for some dumb aesthetic when their old case works just fine

Well, yes and no.

 

The driving reason is aesthetics, but legitimately putting the cables on the underside of the board/chassis solves a lot of problems with current cooling requirements. But, let's be honest, this is the wrong target demographic.

 

The correct target demographics are ITX, and Workstation E-ATX. For ITX it's both aesthetics and cooling, because it's pretty hard to fit anything in an ITX case, and everything is a compromise in cooling.  For Workstation E-ATX, you legitimately want as many of your PCIe slots to be available as possible, and if that means a departure from current designs, that's probably what is needed.

 

But perhaps the kind of redesign we need is to actually move the two x16 PCIE slots to the bottom of the motherboard, and leave everything else. Or in other words, the space needed to fit two PCIe x16 cards with 3-slot widths is to put those two slots on either side of the back-side of the CPU with a 90-degree riser card. That way there's no cables going from the slots to arbitrary parts of the chasis like with the NZXT H1, thermaltake view 71, and other designs that move the GPU. 

 

That said, such designs won't take off without a standard design anyway. So we're basically back to telling nVidia and it's AIB partners that 3-slot GPU's are too big for PC's and either make them thinner, or lower the TDP.

 

[Somerandomtechyboi]

1 minute ago, Kisai said:

The driving reason is aesthetics, but legitimately putting the cables on the underside of the board/chassis solves a lot of problems with current cooling requirements. But, let's be honest, this is the wrong target demographic.

For the want part

 

im just gonna assume the real driving force for this would be the aesthetic seekers cause lets be real here if ppl buy overpriced corsair fans that have inferior performance to noctua fans and cost the same then ppl will ofc buy a prob expensive compatible case and board because they want the most rainbow disco ball of a pc or they want the cleanest possible pc with a mobo "shield" that covers the entire board and makes it look like a flimsy peice of plastic

 

 

For the need part

 

there could be some ppl that need a crap ton of expansion on atx and matx but thats a really niche market, eatx is also a really niche market, the least niche of these markets is the itx one cause as you mentioned itx needs the most space it can get

 

but really if you wanted the most expansion wouldnt you just go for bigger sizes like ssi ebb/meb or swtx?

[StDragon]

2 hours ago, Stahlmann said:

I have no problem if someone "steals" a 10 year old idea that never got to the market.

Prior art. 

[Quackers101]

one shouldn't be able to patent useless ideas or just every day common designs.

unless it was on maybe a change or as in a new solution/idea.

 

else, everyone else could create it by themselves long before any patent was issued. But if this is just to get behind their back, that is not great.

or if it's also on having the means produce said item as well.

[PocketNerd]

3 hours ago, Middcore said:

 

The real rationale here is purely aesthetic. 

Which just seems completely asinine considering that it requires entire case redesigns and fucks up compatibility for customers.