Patents received by FIRST Teams

[4throck]

Originally Posted by M. Krass

Teams deserve the same protection of their investment as any other company or individual. I think it's a bit naive to expect that the developments made by some FIRST teams would only be useful to other FIRST teams, and so it seems prudent to take steps to protect our work from those who may be less scrupulous than many of the people involved with FIRST.

I disagree, but that is another argument for another time. What I've seen has mostly dispelled my fears, and I retract my earlier comment.

And to Alan, I completely understand what a patent is. What I was worried about was the slide of FIRST into a culture of teams being more interested in protecting their own ideas than learning from others, or even allowing others to do what they have done without permission. To go any further into this would get into a debate about the merits of intellectual property itself, an argument that this forum is not exactly conducive to.