FIRST's patents

[dtengineering]

Patents, like most legal documents, are interesting things. They are both clear and easy to read (for the most part) but often difficult to fully interpret unless you are familiar with the relevant laws and case law (court decisions and precedents). So I'll begin with a couple of disclaimers... first of all, I am very much an amateur at patents, but an interested amateur nonetheless, and second of all, I'm Canadian... so unless this patent is filed in Canada (where, I suspect, it would be rejected as we have slightly different rules and precedents here) it doesn't affect robotic competitions held in Canada... or any other nation outside the USA.

I won't try to get inside Dean's head to figure out why he filed the patent, but getting a patent is an expensive process. There are several thousand dollars in government fees involved, and... unless the legal advice was provided pro bono for this patent, likely many thousands of dollars in legal fees. Obviously Dean perceives value in the patent, but I am unsure of why.

To get some idea of what value the patent may have, or is perceived to have, it is useful to look at the prosecution history. Hopefully that link works... otherwise just go here enter the no-bot code and search by patent number, then look at the "Image File Wrapper" tag.

The inital patent's claims (the claims being the most important part of the document) were as follows:

What is claimed is.
1. A method for scoring a competition between a first team and a second team, in which one of the first team and the second team is the better scoring team and the other is the lower scoring team, the method comprising:

a. determining the raw score accumulated by the first team according to the rules of the competition;
b. determining the raw score accumulated by the second team according to the rules of the competition;
C. comparing the score accumulated by the first team to the score accumulated by the second team to determining which team is the better scoring team; and
d. computing the final score of the better scoring team by adding the raw score of the better scoring team to two times the score of the lower scoring team.

This caused the patent examiner to reject the application several times, pointing out that the claims were too broad, and were "obvious" in light of previous patents and other works.

Finally, after years of back and forth, the claims that were issued are:

What is claimed is:

1. A method for fostering coopertition and gracious professionalism among students while inspiring an appreciation of science and technology, the method comprising:

1) establishing a contest played on a playing field with at least four robots, such robots designed and built with participation of such students, such contest requiring accomplishment repetitively of a designated physical task on the playing field, wherein:

2) (i) each robot is controlled by a distinct team of students and designed to repetitively accomplish the physical task, performance of which on the playing field by a given robot triggering attribution to a score based on frequency of achievement of the physical task by the given robot; and

3)(ii) the contest is conducted in matches between two competing alliances of the teams, each match including a plurality of teams from each alliance;

4) assigning a raw score after each match to each alliance based on frequency of achievement of the task by robots of each team in each such alliance;

5) determining a final score for a winning alliance in each match, such winning alliance having a raw score exceeding the raw score of the other alliance by enhancing the raw score of the winning alliance by adding to the raw score of the winning alliance the raw score of the other alliance, so that the winning alliance is thus motivated to cause the other alliance to achieve a high raw score, and the teams of each alliance must work cooperatively

6) setting a final score for the other alliance in each match equal to the raw score achieved by that alliance;

7) ranking the teams based on the final scores achieved in matches in which they participate;

8) so that the students, by engaging in the contest, are provided with an experience involving science and technology under processes as recited herein that motivate cooperation in the midst of competition for a highest final score on the playing field.

It seems to me that the crucial aspect of this invention is likely lines 5, 6 and 7. It is interesting to note that the formula for determining the final score of the winning alliance changes from adding twice the lower score in 1d in the initial application to simply adding the lower alliance's score in 1.5 of the final patent.

At this point, however, I am unsure of a few things... as this patent seems to be based on the 2003 game, "Stack Attack", which occured the year before I got involved with FRC.

1) Did the 2003 game use this method of ranking participants?

2) Was our current system of Qualifying Points and Ranking Points used prior to the filing of this patent? (If so, then that should constitute public disclosure and that particular method of fostering competition should not be patentable.)

3) Did FIRST, or any other organization... anywhere on the planet... establish a competition involving four or more robots built with student participation and each controlled by a distinct team of students accomplishing repetitive tasks on a playing field on for the purpose of fostering co-operative competition and good sportsmanship, while inspiring an appreciation of science and technology prior to 2003? If they did... and even if it was FIRST that did it... that should constitute public disclosure of that part of this claim.
What I'm getting at, I guess, is that even if a patent is issued, it is still up to the patent holder to enforce and defend the patent. If Dean (and I'm specific here... I may have missed it, but I don't see where Dean has formally assigned the patent to FIRST) were to want to enforce this patent, he would have to file a lawsuit against whomever he felt was infringing it. That person or organization could take a number of steps to either point out that they are not infringing, or, as a more aggressive tactic, point out that the patent is not valid. This strikes me... and again... I'm an amateur at this, as a fairly weak patent, limited in scope and quite possibly subject to challenge on several counts.

Still, there has obviously been a lot of work put in to it, so congratulations to Dean on filing (yet another) patent. But like most of the rest of you... it's the "why" that leaves me kind of baffled...

Jason

Apologies for a lengthy post....