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Re: FIRST's patents
All,
I deal with patents all the time in my real job and, in my opinion, is easy to get around. The key point is that the first claim is the independent claim and if you do not violate that claim, then the rest doesn't matter (unless there are more independent claims). In claim 1 there are 7 parts. Every one of those parts must be satisfied in order to violate claim 1 as they are not independent claims themselves.
Part 5 of the claim is the meat and potatoes where they talk about adding to the raw score of the winning alliance. FIRST (and VEX) don't do that anymore. The rank is based on wins and losses. In addition, all VEX has to do is not have the ranking part of the score determined by the losers score at all and they are totally around the patent.
This was a waste of FIRST (and in turn, team) money. My company has a committee that determines if a patent makes good business sense. This one, in my professional opnion, does not.
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In full disclosure I am the President of VEX Robotics, a division of Innovation First International.
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