Did VEX have to say Pretty Please?

[Chris Hibner]

Originally Posted by Alan Anderson

Can you be more specific about what you're disagreeing with?

I'm disagreeing with a FIRST lawsuit holding up in court.

The claim doesn't specify the "W+2L" formula. It says "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".

Exactly. No where in VEX's rules is the winning alliance's score added to the other alliance's score.

Also, claim 6 pertains to how to set the QPs for the losing alliance ("other alliance" is referring to the losing alliance referring to claim 5).

I agree that you can't patent an idea. The claims in the patent do not explicitly cover the qualifying format used in VEX. In my limited experience working with patents, it doesn't take much to circumvent a patent. Changing a very minute detail is usual plenty enough to get around it. VEX using wins and losses and NOT adding winner's and loser's score together (as claimed in claim 5) should be way more than enough needed to win a court case, if it came down to it.

This all being said, this is just an academic argument since I'd be shocked if FIRST ever tried to enforce the patent.

[kramarczyk]

Is it possible that the intent of this patent is not to divide the various organizations, but to provide a means to join them? I will agree with the idea that this patent is defensible in court is ludicrous, but it could be a political tool. Licensing 'coopertition' for $1 among the various organizations could provide a series of media bites to draw attention to S&T. It also provides a tangible reference to point at during the PR battle to promote change.

The question then becomes, will other organizations play ball with this idea... coopertition between organizations. Dean has said for a while that he thinks companies should behave more like the teams. FIRST can't take this to a corporate level by itself, it needs a partner. Perhaps licensing this patent is percieved as a way to demonstrate that.

So did VEX have to say pretty please? Nah, but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody wants a dollar.

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Natchez

... And, I'm NOT a patent attorney.

...What do you think ... vote if you'd like,
Lucien

I'm not an attorney, much less a patent attorney, nor have I ever played one on TV. Some of my favorite and least favorite people are patent attorneys. They are well paid, favorites of mine or not, and generally they worked hard to gain the qualifications for their jobs.

In working with patent attorneys over the years I have learned something about how they think. One thing I've learned is that to show that someone has infringed a patent claim that includes (comprises) several elements, you must show that the infringing product uses all of the elements.

The claim in FIRST's patent 7507169 comprises eight elements:

Spoiler for 7507619:

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; and 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.

Did VEX use all of the elements claimed? Let's see:

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,

yep, did that one

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;

did that one, too

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;

and that one

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;

and that one

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;

seems like they did that one, or maybe a variant (?) with the same intent [edit: it can also be argued that the patent claim doesn't cover variants like the one used by VEX]

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

did that one

and 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.

and they did those two, also.

So it looks like FIRST might have a case for infringement.

[Carol]

Richard is right, interpreting patent claims for possible infringement is a very specialized area of patent law and there are many very, very bright and hard working patent attorneys in this area. (And it is one of the most lucrative specialties as well.) And I am positive that Dean, who is very bright himself and very knowledgeable about patent law, has made sure that whatever group of attorneys is handling this patent is well aware of the potential infringement issue. IFI and FIRST still talk to each other - IFI employees were special guests at Atlanta. They all have the same goal as Dave pointed out, and there is plenty of room for both programs to grow. So I would bet that agreements and/or licensing have already been worked out.

As a side note, all patent attorneys have to have the equivalent of a bachelor's degree in a science or technical field such as engineering before they can get licensed to practice patent law. Many have PhDs in their field before they go to law school.

Here are the IFI patents referred to in a previous note. Highly recommended if you need some help getting to sleep at night. The systems described may look familiar to you.

[Rich Kressly]

Originally Posted by dlavery

Temporary tangent:
Is there a citation somewhere for that claim? Right off the top of my head, I can think of at least eight different robotic competition programs just in the U.S. that involve simultaneous multiple robots on the field, and only one of them is 1-on-1. And I am pretty sure that number will double or triple with just a little bit of research.

-dave
.

No, there is no citation. I think Phil was recalling a discussion I had with him several times. I believe I used the number "8" in my discussions with Phil because I had done limited "ad hoc" research on the competitions that run more than one at a time and had come up with 8, but in no way did I mean than those "8" were all that existed. Also, I put a disclaimer on my original comments to Phil, which was "K-12" student robotics competitions. There are also several college/university related robotics competitions out there that are and have been running many robots simultaneously for quite awhile.

However, I too agree that the discussion of "multiple robots simultaneously" is one that has some bearing on this discussion for sure and I thank Phil for bringing it up.

Originally Posted by dlavery

I get concerned when I hear anyone from a student on a rookie team all the way up to a member of the Board Of Directors talking about "competing" with the other programs. Without a doubt, there are those within FIRST, BotBall, VEX, BEST, BBIQ and MATE that are concerned about "being overtaken" by "the other guys." This is a horrifically inane and patently foolish viewpoint.

Yep.
I've seen it.
I couldn't agree more.

Originally Posted by dlavery

FIRST, BotBall, VEX, BEST, BBIQ and MATE reach a combined total of less than 7% of the high schools in the United States. 93% of the market is currently untapped.
... SNIP...
The very best growth model is one where these organizations all work together to their mutual benefit, to accelerate their combined growth rate, and to reduce their own costs of identifying and recruiting school participation (can anyone say "coopetition"?)

Amen. AMEN. YES!!!!

..and, if you look REALLY REALLY close the seeds for this have been planted.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of being a part of this:
http://www.tsarobotics.org

Sadly, there once was a lot more content there than you see now. The list of attendees was a who's who from the robotics education/competition world. Key folks involved in Botball, FRC, FLL, the old FVC, Bots IQ (they got rid of the word "battle" on purpose because they felt it sent the wrong message) were there. I think people involved in MATE were there too, but I'm not sure. Some were national reps, some were regional reps, some invited guests, some there in an "official" capacity, and some not. All were hand picked for specific purposes however. Jeff Seaton spoke, Vince Wilczynski spoke, Alex Slocum spoke. Several more collegiate Robotics Educators spoke. Robin Shoop was there, so was Dan Larochelle and his boss from Intelitek. So was Donn Griffith. Other large corporations such as DuPont had reps on site. The whole thing was "put on" by the Technology Student Association and funded by an NSF grant. It's interesting to note that TSA does not currently have a pure "Robotics Competition" as a part of their national events, but they clearly see the value and some of their regional and state chapters have begun to adopt some VEX initiatives, etc.

The aftermath of that collective effort produced this document:
http://www.tsarobotics.org/roboticsframework.html
"The Standards-Based Competition Curriculum Development Framework"

So, although this was a seemingly one-time event, look at what it produced and look at what is possible. Also know that some relationships that were previously non-existent or somewhat contentious before continue today in a positive way.

There are things your team and organization can do to help grow these relationships. Our team is fortunate enough to be a part of a larger club that is also home to a TSA chapter. Because of that, wonderful stuff like this occurs:
http://www.tsaweb.org/LMHS-Portable%20Inspiration
http://www.usfirst.org/who/content.aspx?id=11844

I also had the privilege of helping to edit some of the content for robotevents.com - specifically the mission statement is what I'm most proud of. Here's a home where all of these organizations can "get together" if they so choose.

It was also very encouraging to see representatives from other robotics competitions (including FRC from the Dallas Region) in the vendor/display area at the VRC World Championship in Dallas a few weeks ago.

I bet lots of teams and organizations on these boards do similar things and I bet there's lots more other teams can do locally to help bring these groups together as well.

Now, if someone can figure out how to line up all of the planets to bring all of these organizational leaders and key players together in an official capacity, with a slightly wider focus than the previous Robotics Education Symposium had, you'd earn an even BIGGER cookie than the one Pat Fairbank received.

Those of you who know me know I'm really into the Randy Pausch efficiency thing and there's no one task that I'd like to see accomplished more than our mission of inspiration for the socially conscious designers of the future. The model Dave proposes IS the best one and there's some evidence to show that it's possible and it CAN work.

For now, I'm choosing to be an optimist about these patents and will believe that they will never be enforced in ways that would slow the progress of our mission until I see otherwise.

Let's make this happen.

Namaste.

[EricH]

Just as a note or two: The patent was issued in 2004, based on the FRC 2003 game. At that time, the only FIRST-related competitions were FRC, FLL, and possible JFLL. FVC (now IFI's VRC and FIRST's FTC) was still in the planning phases for the pilot. So ANY violations are after the patent was issued.

However, while the patent claim comprises 8 elements, as Richard pointed out, the rest of the patent is also important (otherwise, it wouldn't be there, riiight?). If you read the patent, it's pretty much the game rules from the 2003 FRC game. So it's pretty easy to counter that the patent covers only the methods in said game. It's just as easy to say that the patent covers all methods of the sort, and anybody who uses said methods is in violation of the patent, no matter who they are. (OCCRA comes to mind--I think they use the loser's score modification to the winner's score, or used to.)

And, of course, all this discussion is moot if FIRST (and/or Dean) decides not to file a claim, or if IFI and FIRST have already worked out some arrangement.

[Paul Copioli]

I contest that item 5 that Richard states that is part of independent claim #1 is where FIRSTs entire patent falls apart since the implementation of the win loss. Here is my quote from my other post:

Part 5 of the claim is the meat and potatoes where they talk about adding to the raw score of the winning alliance. FIRST (and VEX) don't do that anymore. The rank is based on wins and losses. In addition, all VEX has to do is not have the ranking part of the score determined by the losers score at all and they are totally around the patent.

The raw score is not enhanced by the loser's score as the raw score is 2 points for a win and 1 point for a tie.

If a company came after FANUC for infringing on this patent I know the FANUC attornies would have a field day.

[gblake]

Originally Posted by dlavery

...
FIRST, BotBall, VEX, BEST, BBIQ and MATE reach a combined total of less than 7% of the high schools in the United States. 93% of the market is currently untapped.
...

And in the 7% of schools Dave cites, the program that is present is often one that only engages a fraction (large or small) of the students that can be reached.

Think of the difference between the number of students who play sports on a school's teams, and the far, far greater number of students who play organized sports in leagues outside of their school system or outside of any organized league.

If anything, Dave underestimated the size of the opportunities. Changing the culture (not just the schools, but the culture) has a long way to go yet. That means I/we can look forward to fun and satisfying hobbies for quite a while yet.

Blake

[Joe Ross]

The patent made slashdot today. http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/13/2220203

[Alex Golec]

Judging the current CD and slashdot response, it would appear that FIRST needs some major PR to patch this one up, or at least make some clarification as to it's intended purpose.

I too am not a patent lawyer. As a logical thinker, I am puzzled by the purposefulness of a patent such as this. Enforcement of the "idea" would have detrimental effects on FIRST. It may just be a flag in the ground, a "we got here first"-type statement.

Again, clarification would be lovely.

[Pjohn1959]

Originally Posted by gblake

And in the 7% of schools Dave cites, the program that is present is often one that only engages a fraction (large or small) of the students that can be reached.

Yep,

At our school, we participate in BEST, VEX and FIRST. Each is represented by a separate group of students. Even at that, it is only 1.4% of the total population of the school. I guess we need to do a better job of spreading the word...