[Madison]

Originally Posted by 4throck

Now, I don't know that much about any of these patents, so ignore this if I am wrong, but I find this discussion slightly worrying. It doesn't seem to me to be within the spirit of competition to patent these things. Teams shouldn't be in this to make a profit, nor should they be able to. AndyMark's patent I can understand, but if what you are patenting is an assembly of kit parts, no matter how complex, why the rush to "protect"? Share your designs people, just because no one else has done it first doesn't mean you should patent it. I'm pretty sure our team could have gotten a patent or two in years past, but it isn't in the spirit of the game to be so secretive.

I understand that teams can still share ideas, but the signal these patents send isn't a good one.

I will now procede to look at these examples to see if my worries are justified.

Teams deserve the same protection of their investment as any other company or individual. I think it's a bit naive to expect that the developments made by some FIRST teams would only be useful to other FIRST teams, and so it seems prudent to take steps to protect our work from those who may be less scrupulous than many of the people involved with FIRST.