Unfortunately the problem isn't limited to paintball, there are major systemic issues with IP. I am not hopeful it will change anytime soon, since as you've pointed out things are set up to favor larger firms and they're the ones with political clout. Patent law is strongly driven by the US Chamber of Commerce.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democ...ctual-property
THIS.Quote:
And IMO, the real hurdle to open source paintball gear is manufacturing, not legal issues.
Lets put it this way, if somebody wants to do a stacked tube spool, just 1, we (J4) would let them if they promise not to sell it. This is a 'for you' gun. Yep, no problem. There would be a small fee (VERY SMALL) just to cover the paperwork and such. And maybe buy us a beer at an event. We would even give you some CAD.
But it will cost a LOT to build it. Even if you have all the permissions. Less so if you have a machine shop.
Open sourcing could be just building an inline gun and using existing internals. Yet even that is rare. How many Evil-M's are built? Even if it is an epic gun?
The CAD and design could be done, permissions granted, but in the end the cost to build the gun (and I have built....20+?) at a 1 off or short run is expensive. For a gun that might not work if you changed the design too much? And will most likely will have to re-machine?
Since most of us don't own a machine shop, expect to pay $1500 for an airsmith or small shop to build you a gun with basic externals. Expect to pay $3000+ for a CNC shop, if you know the guy. For prototype runs from a few shops (Spurlock/Valveflow) budget $10K.
Even the new 3D printers, that do metal and did a working 1911? $12k for the gun. Just one.
Making it is the expensive part.
If someone really wanted to do a PL torque without your blessing, they'd just go and do it. You really think they need your CAD if they're going to design an entire custom body? Is it worth anyone's time to do ANY paperwork? Are you REALLY going to sue them if not? Of course not. It's a value negative proposition.
This goes just as well for "open sourcing" the "contact points". Spoiler, every gun ever that exists in the real world is just as effectively open source. Anyone with a pair of decent calipers is perfectly capable of the reverse engineering.
Even with low cost FDM printers, manufacturing is the bottleneck. Look at the Pico - commercial services for printing them generally fall short of being a good option, so Simon had to step up and get soft tooling done. We're still probably 5 years from really good additive machines that are cheap.
I'm glad to see you coming around, I suppose, but it's been obvious the whole time that design is the easy part. For an outfit on a very limited budget, legal costs just to adequately protect YOURSELF are on the same order as a prototype. Actually executing legal action against an infringer is daunting,
It's generally cheap to get lathe parts and stuff them in an existing body (The Torque's Spyder AMG great grand-daddy, some engines that have lived inside the auspices of an ion, etc...), but going to a fully bespoke marker of production spec, is definitely up there. Though I find your numbers a shade high :)
You totally misunderstood. Ha!Quote:
If someone really wanted to do a PL torque without your blessing, they'd just go and do it. You really think they need your CAD if they're going to design an entire custom body?
A PL torque they can do, of course. We have handed the CAD out to lots of people for that already. We are not talking cosmetics, we are talking a new version of the gun in complete. As in, a total open source new gun from scratch, covered by the patent.
Doing a ground up gun of the several other concepts we have in the patent or otherwise, doing a version that is covered by the patent and maybe we didn't fully show would be covered. We are not going to do to the limits of making 20 different variants of the same gun. But we decided to let other people do that. People would need permissions to do that. So, we do that really easy.
We also talked about opening the patent go out to the Open Source group, they pay a fee (small!), they can CAD it up how they want and do a group buy. That would reduce the price quite a bit also.
We just want to make it easy for them to do on a limited basis because technically, the single one, like doing a mQ from scratch, would be in violation. We want people to feel like they can do limited custom, as in COMPLETELY new customs, while still not dealing with patent violation by being really easy with licensing.
In that, short run guns, say a custom, ground up, completely different design from any we put on the market yet still under the patent we would like to make available also. Same with some upgrades and related. Being pro-active instead of suey.
As for the numbers, those are what I have been quoted, and have paid at times. Sometimes quite a bit less, for a 'from the ground' gun. Maybe a bit high, I was doing several. Maybe 2-3 of them, maybe ten. The real cost is often the setup. $7k for 1-2 guns, $10k for 10. Then you need boards, and etc... It can be quite a bit quite quick. I have over $40k in R&D I figure. More for the production runs alone though. Spread over 10 years that isn't very much though. Ha! The last year though... yeah, quite a bit more. :D
As for putting this in an existing body, say a special version that goes into a Spyder or Timmy? Open source it (with permissions) and then make Sporques? Hmm... That might be fun. :)
mmmm if you could come up with something to replace the ram sleeve in gen 2/3 timmies mmmmm
Would need to do it all the way out the to front - a bespoke front end also.Quote:
mmmm if you could come up with something to replace the ram sleeve in gen 2/3 timmies mmmmm
But it is do-able. You could turn the LPR way down also...
Josh, do you think the "Husher Impulse concept" on zdspb is covered under your patent? I'd be curious to know the timestamp on that.
My understanding is that since the Husher uses a traditional ram separated from the action, (sort of) Josh's patent will not cover it.
The 'Husher' is covered - while not illustrated, it is covered.
The ram is not separated in the husher, it is all one contiguous part.
If the ram was separate from the valve, and didn't travel the entire distance then it would not be covered. Say, if the ram moved 1", but then impacted the spool after .25" of movement, and they were different parts, then it would not be covered.
The ram in the the angel, because they used the word spool for it, was a problem we had in the application process. So we had to define the ram action and the spool as being one part.
Our patent also is prior art, and was filed before the Husher, just in case you were wondering. :)
Edit: The Husher was made public in 2006. Our patent was applied for in 2005.
Husher:
http://www.zdspb.com/media/customwor...rimp_diag1.JPG
I want to build a bunch of random parts in my garage that use that function (not to sell) so I can patent troll you. Make you pay a lawyer to come at me bro, then I get the formal notice and hand it over to you. You pay hundreds/ thousands and I pay a few dollars to be a turd. :devil: In Europe your patent reach doesn't apply to individuals anyway... I don't understand your stance on this one. IMO it's worse than SP, but at least SP didn't sugar coat their patent ogre-ness.
At either rate, I stand by my point that the philosophical OS movement will never go anywhere will the patent frenzy. Blame manufacturing if you please, but when you would go after individuals that pose no commercial threat you're part of the problem. That is beyond protecting your commercial interests.