Thread: FIRST's patents
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Unread 22-04-2009, 17:29
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Re: FIRST's patents

Quote:
Originally Posted by Paul Copioli View Post
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin Stiltner View Post
I have to agree with Paul, I think this patent was a waste, if you want to share something, publish it with one of the many licenses available for free. Surely this would have cost less than the patent process.
I agree that this patent was probably pursued more to make a point than with any real expectation of enforcing the claim (to whit: all of Dean's discussions about suing others for "non-infringement")**. But I would not get too worried about FIRST's cost to pursue the filing. The filing itself is not that expensive. Typically, the real costs are usually associated with the gazillion hours of patent attorney time to prepare the filing. In this particular case, I would be willing to speculate that those hours were either directly provided pro bono or provided by DEKA donating the services of their own patent attorney. So, I am not concerned about any of our registration fees going for that purpose.

-dave

** there is also an interesting little twist that I just realized that virtually ensures that FIRST would never even attempt to enforce this patent. But that is for another discussion.

.
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