During the week there was significant chatter on the Internet about an Amazon Kindle clone that has appeared in China. We are all familiar with the "Spot the Difference" pictures that tease our brain into looking for large or small differences between two almost identical pictures. Below are two pictures for your examination.

Norbert Hildebrand
Insight Media Analyst

Just in case you were wondering, there are some differences in form and location of the buttons, the upper frame width and of course the logo. Takuya Otani, Nikkei Electronics, discovered the "new" EBR in Japan during the ‘Digital Publishing Fair 2009′ in Tokyo. The EBR was shown by the Japanese subsidiary of Peking University Group Corp and according to the article was independently developed by them and has nothing to do with the Amazon Kindle 2.

Interestingly Amazon has gone to significant length to protect themselves from copycats, and was awarded a US design patent (D591,741) on May 5, 2009 that protects the design. Keep in mind that a design patent, unlike a normal patent cannot be filed worldwide. It protects them against any copycat imports into the US only. Any design protection in the rest of the world would come from local laws that mostly have different rules and regulations. We don’t know how widely Amazon has protected their design internationally.

Another open question relates to the issue of enforcement. Having a design patent only makes sense if you are prepared to protect your rights, if necessary, in court. When we asked Amazon for a statement we got the following response: "Amazon doesn’t focus on other companies, but focuses on offering our customers the best possible reading experience." This leaves any action of Amazon up to your imagination, so we will have to wait and see.

From the looks of it they are all using the same front plane, which most probably means E-Ink/Prime View International. What could a company like E-Ink do to prevent something like this to happen? After spending some time on this it becomes clear — almost nothing. As the most dominant supplier for electrophoretic displays in the world it comes down to market share. Even if we assume that the market share is not 100% (we still guess that it is above 90%) such a monopolistic market position requires them to provide displays to customers, whether they know what the potential customer is working on or not. It is not the task of E-Ink to control their customers’ design to avoid copycat products or product-level IP infringements.

Overall, this is not the first case where miraculous design duplication has happened (after all great minds think alike) nor will it be the last time. Should we be angry and cry for more protection? For my part, I will sit back and leave the legal aspects of this development to Amazon and their lawyers. Whatever the outcome; EBRs (especially the Amazon Kindle) have become important enough to be copied. Wow, EBRs are ranking up there with Swiss watches, designer handbags and Apple i-Pods. Who would have thought this just a year ago?