Subject:
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RE: Lego Protocol Patent
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Wed, 3 Nov 1999 15:30:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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532 times
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> I periodicaly search patents assigned to Interlego just to see what kind of
> stuff LEGO might be up to. I noticed this one granted in September on a
> communications protocol. I don't get into this level of programming detail
> and it might not even apply to mindstorms, but I thought I'd share the
> number with the rest of you.
> http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US05952932__
> BTW It is very unusual to have 55 claims in one patent.
Good grief! Maybe I should get involved in patent law (or at least spec'ing
for patent lawyers).
Honestly, the basic protocol that is described has been implemented LOTS of
times in small proprietary projects. In fact, the fire alarm system I'm
currently implementing uses a multi-drop half-duplex master/slave
system for sending information from one master panel to the slaves.
It includes a message synchronization scheme, a major/minor protocol
byte, integrated sequence/retry counter byte, and length and checksum byte.
Read Tannenbaum's "Computer Networks" and you'll find it's not a very
original idea.
There really isn't anything special about these little protocols, I guess
it's who gets it on paper first. The intent (I hope) is not to discourage
others from using similar protocols in DISSIMILAR products, but to keep
opportunistic scavengers from creating products SIMILAR to the RCX.
Cheers,
Ralph Hempel - P.Eng
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Check out pbFORTH for LEGO Mindstorms at:
<http://www.hempeldesigngroup.com/lego/pbFORTH>
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Reply to: rhempel at bmts dot com
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Lego Protocol Patent
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| (...) I agree with everything you've said, Ralph. My turn to say somthing about patents. I know the job of being a patent clerk must be amazingly difficult -- how can any person possibly know about enough prior art to tell the obvious from the (...) (25 years ago, 3-Nov-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Lego Protocol Patent
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| I periodicaly search patents assigned to Interlego just to see what kind of stuff LEGO might be up to. I noticed this one granted in September on a communications protocol. I don't get into this level of programming detail and it might not even (...) (25 years ago, 3-Nov-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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