Well Scott, if you have been using this process for years you should have
patented it.  But not to many in N. America have been doing lead-free
through-hole soldering.

But you won't find anything in IPC about  this because the CLAIMS,
specifically focus on  1. tin-zinc   2. tin-silver    &  3. tin-copper
lead-free through-hole soldering.  IPC is working on tin-silver-copper
(SAC) lead-free soldering of SMT boards.

NEC filled for the patent in 2001.  I imagine there may be a lot of
lead-free patents assigned to the Japanese soon because they got there
before us.

Happy Holden
Westwood Associates




Scott Nimon <[log in to unmask]>
Sent by: TechNet <[log in to unmask]>
01/07/2005 02:09 PM
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Subject
[TN] Patent No.:  US6,617,529 B2






DC members,

I have encountered a patent which any through-hole land patterns with an
annular ring of >0.4mm and used for lead-free soldering is in violation
of.  We have used 0.4mm as our standard annular ring for all
through-hole devices with  hole sizes greater than 1.6mm for years.  A
link to the patent is provided below.  Are there any IPC documents I can
use to invalidate this patent?  Any suggestions or comments will be
welcomed.



http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL
&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,617,529.WKU.&OS=PN/6,617,
529&RS=PN/6,617,529



Scott Nimon

Yazaki North America

6801 Haggerty Road

Mail Stop:  2229E

Canton, MI 48187



Phone:  734-983-2630

Fax:  734-983-2631

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