[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by Oblarg

I'm not trying to impugn your motives here - I'm sure your intentions are good. But, you haven't addressed my point - if your setup satisfied the rule, what's stopping any team that wants to use parts they've developed outside of build season from making a few spares and starting an ebay account and calling it a COTS product?

The fact that doing so would require selling them to any other team who wanted one. And that doing so would reveal and effectively make said design public domain (unless it was something like 217/148 nonadrive, which is/was patent pending). It's the same way that the current rules regarding the reuse of old designs works; you can reuse all you want as long as you make it public domain so any team can use it freely.