Why do companies try to take patents out on standard schematics?

[Faringdon]

Hi,
Do you find that electronics company owners are doing themselves down?
They waste time trying to patent bog standard electronics schematics.

I mean, ive seen companies trying to patent  bog standard flyback SMPS schematics, and bog standard linear regulators. Also, bog standard general analog circuitry…literally circuitry where a 12 yr old kid could have done it……its so basic that its not worth patenting  it.

Do you find this?

Why do they do it?

[T3sl4co1l]

Well, for one, the people doing the hiding, have no understanding of what they're hiding.

More stuff to publish, is also more stuff to support, more stuff to answer questions about, etc.  It probably costs more.  I mean, even just to have a procedure in place, to allow requests of internal information, takes work, too.  We're talking big corporations, ISO 9001 and the like, everything must be described, everyone responsible must be trained on it, etc.  It's not trivial.

Do you agree?

Tim

[Faringdon]

Thanks, but i am not speaking of actually publishing the circuit diagrams....just not patenting them.

[xrunner]

And they grind off part numbers from the chips on the real board too. 

[cortex_m0]

Seems pretty straightforward to me.

• Most engineers give pretty superficial reviews, because they have their own work to do, and really diving in can take a while.
• Almost nothing goes from engineer's conception to production without some tweaks, so aiming for perfection before building prototypes is probably aiming too high.
  

There's not much in the way of IP concerns with the circuit boards I work on - it's just a calculation about the risk/reward of having 5 reviewers instead of 1 reviewer before building 25 units.

[T3sl4co1l]

Oh you mean as an employee?

Ahh, so this is just another in a carnival of terrible companies you've worked at?  Par for the course I suppose.

I don't get why "loads" of engineers would be seeing them.  Or what's wrong with them not seeing them, per se.

I can't think of any situation I've seen where there was such a problem; maybe between sister companies (under a common owner), in which case there's usually some "Technology Transfer" procedure, which may or may not be a Big Deal to engineering or management.  There can be other (stronger) reasons for isolating (silo-ing) divisions/subsidiaries, in general relating to the power structure and politics of the company(ies).

Tim

[vk6zgo]

Thanks, but i am not speaking of actually publishing the circuit diagrams....just letting loads of engineers come in and work on them and see them...after all, if its bog standard circuitry, then it doesnt matter.

..In fact, its better to have more engineers looking in on schems, as it means the schems will be more refined as a result.

But companies are paranoid about engineers leaving their company, in case they "spread" the schems......and when you look at the schems...its like a bog standard flyback SMPS.....i mean.....its "out there" already........you could let the world see it and it woudlnt harm the business.

Well, for one, the people doing the hiding, have no understanding of what they're hiding.

...thanks, i think youve hit the  nail on the head here. And these people are causing them selves problems by all the hiding.

I worked at a place like that!

Their so-called" motherboard" was just an interface for a lot of stuff to connect to an ordinary PC.
All the reasonable "design" was cribbed straight out of the "National Semiconductors Handbooks"----the dumb stuff was all theirs, although even there, it was "public domain" stuff!

They wouldn't let us have a schematic "due to IP issues", so when, as often happened, a completed unit refused duty, fault finding was incredibly difficult.

The only thing which might have merited "IP protection" was their software, which worked really well, but their physical security around that was appallingly lax-----they lost a laptop with the software on it, once!

Everything about the place was horrific-----from construction quality to component supply.
They did dumb things routinely, & woe betide you if you suggested improvements!

The Boss would rave on about striving for ISO 9001 status.
I assume the idea was to ensure they made the same old stuff-ups in the same dumb way in perpetuity!

PS: If you are wondering how I know what was on the board, after many months, they finally gave in, & grudgingly gave us a schematic!

[amyk]

Meanwhile everyone who has the product can trace out a schematic...

[Kjelt]

Meanwhile everyone who has the product can trace out a schematic...

That really can take up a lot of time esp with multilayer pcb's. I just had to do this for my height gauge since the manufacturer won't give any schematics or help.
They just say "out of support" .

So yes I can feel for the TS, if you even inside a company get too much restrictions, all for being scared their knowledge will get stolen.

Go back in time to the 80's / 90's, Philips, a dutch consumer electronics and TME manufacturer, for any of their devices they had service manuals you could order and buy for $15-30.
In the end of the service manual there was the schematic, the pcb layout with quadrants and all the parts that you also could order.
They did this for the repair dept. but also external companies that could repair their products.

Go forward to 2021, Apple won't give any details, schematics, nor sell you any spare chip, etc.

They call that progress 

[GlennSprigg]

This may be off topic... so shoot me!!  (End it quicker!!  )
My BIGGEST qualm about 'Schematics', has always been about 'up-keep' of the bloody things!!!
When/where many people/depts work on systems, they often fail to update the drawings/documentation... 
The only thing worse than tech info that is non-existent, is stuff that is out of date or wrong!! Worse than having nothing!   

[bdunham7]

Why do they do it?

The four reasons for hiding/withholding a schematic are 1)  to prevent anyone from copying or learning from a truly remarkable design 2) to prevent anyone from fixing or modifying the product  3) to hide the fact that the design was copied from somewhere or 4) to hide the fact the the design is a bag of crap and perhaps can't do what it claims it can (audiophoolery and other scam products).

[LaserSteve]

I worked for a year for a vendor of some interesting but low tech things for the  military market. Our low life, least cost "competitor" hired multiple private investigators to trespass 150 meters onto the farm to get to our design center and raid the office trash. Being lonely and stuck 300 miles from home, I made it my winter project to create some interesting large schematics that were not shredded per procedure. 

I hope they enjoyed building the most ineffective,  inefficient,  expensive, failure prone hardware I could design. Leaked complete with data sheets and photoshopped invoices.  Any part or demo board  I did not like went out in the trash.

For cars, audio for bands, lab equipment,  I support right to repair. However, when the creepy competitor risks lives in the field by copy-pasta reverse engineering, there I draw the line.

Steve

[Zero999]

I've never heard of any company doing this. They normally make their employees sign non disclosure agreements and lots of modern designs are also in software, rather than purely schematics. It sounds a bit silly to me. If I worked somewhere like that, I'd start to look elsewhere.

[ferdieCX]

Go back in time to the 80's / 90's, Philips, a dutch consumer electronics and TME manufacturer, for any of their devices they had service manuals you could order and buy for $15-30.
In the end of the service manual there was the schematic, the pcb layout with quadrants and all the parts that you also could order.
They did this for the repair dept. but also external companies that could repair their products.

Go forward to 2021, Apple won't give any details, schematics, nor sell you any spare chip, etc.

They call that progress 

I remember a time when Philips used to put inside a copy of the schematics, even in a portable transistor radio.

[Messtechniker]

Yep. Those were the days.

[Bassman59]

I've never heard of any company doing this. They normally make their employees sign non disclosure agreements and lots of modern designs are also in software, rather than purely schematics. It sounds a bit silly to me. If I worked somewhere like that, I'd start to look elsewhere.

Everywhere I've ever worked, the designs were on servers accessible to everyone in engineering. This included software, firmware and hardware. It was just easier this way. If you needed to see a schematic, you could just grab it, and you didn't have to bother the person who designed it. Lots of design pieces were shared among projects. Even though in general one person did the board design or firmware, there was always open discussion about how to do this or that among the engineering staff because really that's a good way to improve products. And this also made things easier for design reviews. Basically the bosses assumed everyone was an adult.

The only exception was the time I spent working for a defense contractor. Then access to designs was limited because of security reasons. And that sucked, because there was a lot of interesting stuff going on.

[TimFox]

There is an important contradiction built into version control for wiring diagrams:
1. A printed copy from the computer server is no longer controlled (since you can't tell by reading it if it be the current version or not).
2. However, troubleshooting or assembling a circuit from a computer screen rather than a paper copy is cumbersome, compared to working from a paper copy that one can mark up.
Point 1 is not trivial:  I sometimes found techs working from an obsolete copy, since they thought the one-off being built was the same as the previous one.

[coppercone2]

[ejeffrey]

Definitely there is a mindset that uses secrecy as a way to signal importance.  The line of thinking is basically: If the data is secret, people must want to take it.  If they want to take it it must be important. If it is important I must be really smart to have made it"! This is especially common in the minds of management who don't actually understand the details of the documents they are setting policy for.  People also tend to both over- and under-estimate the abilities of their competition: they think that nobody else could come up with the genius system that we have, but even a tiny hint and they could leapfrog us.

Secrecy is often a veil for mediocrity.

[Just_another_Dave]

There is an important contradiction built into version control for wiring diagrams:
1. A printed copy from the computer server is no longer controlled (since you can't tell by reading it if it be the current version or not).
2. However, troubleshooting or assembling a circuit from a computer screen rather than a paper copy is cumbersome, compared to working from a paper copy that one can mark up.
Point 1 is not trivial:  I sometimes found techs working from an obsolete copy, since they thought the one-off being built was the same as the previous one.

Adding a QR code with a link to the last version available (the link should not change when a new version is released to avoid having links pointing to old documents) could partially solve point 1. This is what many scientific journals like MDPI do (they add a QR with the doi code of the article in it), so, as long as the reader is willing to verify that the current version is the one that’s being used, it is always possible to know if there’s a newer version

[Benta]

I've never experienced this, but your employer might have identified you as a special case/danger as it would appear from this thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/electronics-companies-putting-viruss-onto-usb-sticks/

[Zero999]

The only exception was the time I spent working for a defense contractor. Then access to designs was limited because of security reasons. And that sucked, because there was a lot of interesting stuff going on.

I've also encountered that, but most projects were restricted, which everyone was cleared to work on. Only secret designs/projects had a small select number of people who were allowed access to. It was a pain sometimes, but it made sense.

[thm_w]

Oh you mean as an employee?

Ahh, so this is just another in a carnival of terrible companies you've worked at?  Par for the course I suppose.

What are the chances that every single company is that bad though, at some point you have to start reflecting on yourself. OP seems to work at companies for at most a few months (contractor?).
If I knew he's going to be gone in a month I wouldn't want to bother setting up an account to access whatever protected folder or site contains the product schematic, unless they had some specific need to look at them. Not to mention accounts sometimes cost a lot of money to add, if this is an online database.

I've never experienced this, but your employer might have identified you as a special case/danger as it would appear from this thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/general-computing/electronics-companies-putting-viruss-onto-usb-sticks/

IT probably controls access then and has him on a watch list. Too much risk in ransomeware taking over important folders at that point.

[Benta]

At the other end of the scale, you have engineering companies that trust their employees completely and give them free hands. This only after a very thorough vetting, though.
The legendary Lockheed Martin "Skunk Works" is a shining example that also delivered brilliant results (P-38, U-2, SR-71 etc.). But I doubt that the OP would even get to vetting.

[vk6zgo]

This may be off topic... so shoot me!!  (End it quicker!!  )
My BIGGEST qualm about 'Schematics', has always been about 'up-keep' of the bloody things!!!
When/where many people/depts work on systems, they often fail to update the drawings/documentation... 
The only thing worse than tech info that is non-existent, is stuff that is out of date or wrong!! Worse than having nothing!   

Many years back, the old PMG Dept produced magnificent schematics for all their "in-house" stuff.
One such, was of a Programme Fail Alarm.

Some years later, after the Broadcast/Comms part became Telecom Aust, we were working after hours at an AM station in the WA Kimberley region, doing yearly checks.

While we were doing this, the PFA failed, so we put it to one side to fix at the end of proceedings.
Looking at it, early in the morning, the schematic "seemed to make sense", but after a "cuppa", we realised that one position showed a PNP transistor, where such a beast would clearly not work.

Yep, the draughtsman had carefully drawn the wrong polarity of device!

The actual (dead) transistor was an NPN type, & changing the drawing made the operation understandable.

The down side was we didn't have the particular type, but luck was with us, & there were some MM1711 NPNs in the spares for the defunct HF comms stuff, which worked a treat, using the "about the same size, three legs, NPN---Yep! that'll do! school of engineering!"