[miketwalker]

I think Cory's reference to Paul's post is correct.

However, even assuming the patent could allow FIRST to sue Vex/Innovation First, if that were to happen there would be a major problem as both FIRST and Vex could be viewed as humanitarian and volunteer driven organizations with the goal of motivating students to go to college in technical fields as well as provide some working knowledge of engineering in high school.

In a 100% hypothetical and fictitious scenario: If FIRST were to use legal measures to try to limit Vex the only people that would be hurt would be the students themselves and it would be pretty obvious that FIRST had lost it's way.

There are a handful of wonderful educational robotics programs, each with advantages and disadvantages, like BotBall, Battlebots IQ, BEST, FIRST, Vex, etc. but all with similar goals. I do worry that sometimes these groups unintentionally try to knock each other down when each one appeals to students in different ways with the same goal... to inspire students to become engineers. Lawyers have their place, but if they were used to try to demerit programs striving for the same goals as us then it would be quite ashame.