by Toumal » Tue May 04, 2010 10:46 am
Heya, this is Toumal from the FG forums!
I think your idea is quite awesome. I dunno what would happen if you have multiple receivers turned on, but I guess that could still be handled in a certain way.
However, just because you posted that article online doesn't mean it can't be patented. "Prior art" only matters in countries where such a thing can invalidate a patent. In most parts of europe, the system is "First to Patent", not "First to Invent" as in the US.
To be sure you'd have to patent it yourself - which is of course going full circle and reaffirming what many people already know and hate about the patent system as a whole to be true.
Worse, even individual aspects of your "Model Load" idea might already be covered by individual claims in the Spektrum patent, like for example the general principle of associating a receiver with a certain model. Since one patent often contains multiple "claims", this can also be a problem for anyone wanting to implement "Model Load".
Just like the mpeg consortium (owners of the h.264 codec) are going to go after the open codecs like Theora, Spektrum could still go after any implementation of "Model Load" by saying that it infringes on their patent.