[Jared Russell]

This happens every year, mini-bot or not (think 121's roller claw in 2008, or the "pincher" in 2010). It just happens to be extraordinarily easy to copy a mini-bot, owing to a combination of rules, materials, and the fact that the emerging "best" solution is ridiculously simple.

Designs get copied. Every year. Especially this year. But unless you start an "FRC Patent Office", I'm not sure what can be done about it. And in the end, I think that the net gain (many students being inspired by implementing, thereby learning from, what others have perfected) more than offsets the net loss (that some short-sighted teams will end up short changing students from the full engineering design process).