[Mark McLeod]

Corey has found them commercially available and corrected my error.

I believe past Festo valves were not a COTS item, but custom-made for FIRST. At least as I understand it, they were a special production run specifically for FIRST and they couldn't be purchased anywhere but through the special Festo FIRST site. That would bring them under Rule <R34>. However, it's certainly something that we could get a ruling on in the Q&A. It's possible, since they were donated by Festo, rather than contracted by FIRST, that FIRST treated the Festo valves as COTS.
I'll post the question to the Q&A.

<R34> Parts custom-made for FIRST and provided to FRC teams in the Kit Of Parts for previous FRC competitions (e.g. 2006 FRC transmissions, custom-made motor couplers, custom sensor strips, FRC CMUcam II modules, etc.) may be used if the part is still functionally equivalent to the original condition and:

A. The part is now generally available as a COTS item from an accessible source, or

B. All information required to fabricate the part (e.g. complete drawings, materials list, Gerber Files where appropriate, etc.) is openly available, such that any team could fabricate the part (or have it fabricated for them).

Otherwise, such parts are prohibited from use in the 2010 competition.