Quote:
Originally Posted by Pavan Dave
I saw this on Reddit and /. just seconds ago and searched and found this discussion.
I just lost almost all respect I had for Dean and FIRST for doing something as pointless as this. I hope this patent gets overturned. No matter what he says, what he does, this does NOT help robotics. I can see the one day where FIRST goes from trying to beat other programs and legally hurting other programs because it can't compete in certain areas.
I give it a matter of years before everybody knows and has participated in FIRST...for all the wrong reasons.
Pavan Davé
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Pavan,
I think you are misunderstanding FIRST's intentions in getting these patents.
1) Patents serve to help spread ideas just as much as they protect them. Patents offer innovators a way to publicly share their inventions in a forum that still offers them legal protection from specific copying.
2) The specific wording of FIRST's patents makes violating the independent claim virtually impossible. Unless each and every one of the parts of the claim are violated, there is no violation. If you read the fine print, the "coopertition" patent actually talks about a very specific scoring algorithm that other competitions have never used anyway.
FIRST isn't trying to be the bully on the playground here. They are disseminating some "good ideas" in an official forum.
Was it necessary, and was it a good use of time and money? Not in my opinion, but I definitely don't think it calls for a "loss of almost all respect" for Dean and FIRST.