Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I was asked to remove my youtube video showing how to make a DIY poley geyser self cleaning bio / mechanical filter. Pretty amazing. These guys are cleaning house with the profit on this device. They wanted over $4,000 for a filter with the capacity of my DIY filter. Its just a couple plastic cans with an air discharge tube and some LDPE beads in it and while it does do an amazing job I think its over priced.. Anyway below is the comment I received. The patent is public info and I changed the name to "many geyser" filter to avoid the "polygeyser" trade mark infringement possibility.


I would like your opinions on weather I am infringing on their patent by publishing DIY plans type video.

I am not a lawyer but they will probably still say you are showing others how to infringe on their patent even though you changed the name



I think you would have to look up that patent to see if you are actually infringing on it, but come to think of it, as long as you are not selling the plans or the product I don't think they can do anything, using the name they can go after you since they probably have that trademarked, but as long as you are just building them for yourself I wouldn't think you would have to worry.

The patent is easily available to anyone who can be bothered to look for it
If someone decided to market it then that would infringe their patent and invite trouble but as long as you don`t make any monetary gain or use their trademark name for it.. you should be right
They are a bit miffed that you are encouraging other people to make something "similar"

Patents are also quite specific so if you make sure that your design has some marked differences from their patent, then you are also safe but then when it comes to posting such things on yourtube that is a whole new part of the situation that I'm sure makes things a lot trickier.

Theres no money of anything of value being exchanged so I dont see how it would be a problem. I could get a design patent for improvements or changes to their patent. So go fly a kite comes to mind, but I guess the question is how is youtube going to look at it.

Perhaps the most important question is this. I used a picture from their web page at the start of the video. This is a picture displayed in public. So is using this publicly "broadcast" image a violation of any sort?

If they have copyright on their images then I would think they control who reproduces it.

AFAIK... a picture belongs to the photographer that took it... therefore is copyright... unless the photographer sells the photo, or right to use the photo... no-one else can do so without breaching copyright..

In this case the photo was no doubt taken on commission.. and the rights assigned to the firm...

Using it without permission is a breach of copyright... regardless of whether it is posted in a "public domain"... it isn't a "public domain" picture... if that makes sense...

Change the name to something like "self cleaning filter" and they won't have aleg to stand on.

Can you post a link to the video?

I removed their image. So now there is no commercial images. The only things that is not drawn by me is the patent image. This should be ok right?

IF it is "their" drawing then I would say that they would still have copy right. However, if make the picture a link to the patents website that would be perfectly fine.

Mind you I don't have a lot of patience with them because of the number of times I've tried to get in touch with them about their products. As yet I have recieved no replies. I'm really big on protecting intellectual property* so I don't have a problem with them charging a mint for their invention. However if you can't get info of them on their products on whether their would be suitable for the applications I have in mind then even if I could afford the price I can't get one because they won't talk to me.

So if I can ever be bothered I might make one and see how it goes and as far as I'm concerned thats tough bickies for them.

* When I got serious about this a few years ago I deleted all my copied games and music.

I'm pretty sure that the use of the pattent pictures is covered by the "fair use" clause of the uS copyright law. You are using limited excepts for educational purposes and not selling anything. The pattent is freely available for download, so there can't be a problem as long as you aren't selling it.

I'm going to give one of these a shot. I think I'll try to use a 5 gallon bucket for a charge chamber and put it in the bottom of a 30 gallon plastic barrel.

We had a problem with a patent for a type of trailer that we used. It ended up in court and I found a picture of the design that pre dated the patent and those nice guys paid all our legal cost and gave us permission to build what ever we liked. Just so we didn't break there nice patent that they nicked from someone else in the first place I liked to call it a 60k rectal adjustment. And why I can freely talk about it is because I never signed anything. It was the company I worked for that agreed to not tell any one.
My advice it to do an instructable about it. Even if you use another name.
http://www.instructables.com/

can i get a simple pic showing how this (flow paths)works useing the 2 drums?

Did you go with the soda bottle caps?

I belong to a local inventors group and we discuss patents on a regular basis. If you create the photo, drawing, etc of anything in public, you can use them. If you copied someone elses photo, drawing or video, you can not use that without permission. A photo of someone elses photo is still a copy, can't use it. If you demonstrate how to build something I have a patent on, that is legal. If you give away a secret ingredient that I am legally protecting, that is illegal. If you take apart my product and demonstrate how to build your own, that is legal. If you try to make a profit from duplicating a patented product or publish anything copyrighted without written consent/permission, that is illegal. If you aren't trying to make a profit, and it is not violating protected processes, copyrights or ingredients, it is considered free speech.

So by all means, please inform the public how to build it themselves cheaper! (unless it involves a patented process to create the product that you can't circumvent)