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jr
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Wed Aug 13, 2008 11:24 pm

jburka wrote:
What's interesting to me about the Rev patent is that it controls multiple very different things: the layout, the bridle, the mesh, the handles


Surely not the same handle design that the Wright brothers used in 1899?
 
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Slow Dog
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Wed Aug 13, 2008 11:24 pm

Bill Lancashire wrote:
As a matter of interest, when does the 'Rev' patent expire?.


Jan 9, 2007. The earlier patent expired then (the then US standard 17 years after issue) automatically, the second revised version has a disclaimer giving it an expiry time of the same date. Duration of patents is now 20 years in EU and US.
 
Stephen Hoath
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Thu Aug 14, 2008 12:53 pm

A while back a Frenchman called Alain Micquoux (spelling?) developed a quad kite with a split keel that flow as either a dual line or a quad kite depending on where you put your hands on the handles. I have been trying to find a reference to this on the web but can't.

Does anyone remember what it was called? or know of a link to information?
 
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Thu Aug 14, 2008 2:00 pm

Stephen Hoath wrote:
A while back a Frenchman called Alain Micquoux (spelling?) developed a quad kite with a split keel that flow as either a dual line or a quad kite depending on where you put your hands on the handles. I have been trying to find a reference to this on the web but can't.

Does anyone remember what it was called? or know of a link to information?


L'infringement du Patent...no idea what happened to it though
Rob
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jburka
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Thu Aug 14, 2008 4:10 pm

sftonkin wrote:
Revolution is concerned is that they don't mind you developing a quad line kite as long as it doesn't meet the condition 3<n<5 (where n is the number of lines)!


Right. Except for the Synergy Deca, the Symphony, and all the others that have been named.
 
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Thu Aug 14, 2008 4:13 pm

jr wrote:
Surely not the same handle design that the Wright brothers used in 1899?


Nope. Not the same handle design at all. The Wright Brothers used straight sticks, while the Rev patent calls for the handles to have two different angles in them. From a mechanical advantage standpoint, this is significantly different.

Merrick Munday and Marc Ricketts both got around that part of the patent by using latitudinaly symmetrical curved handles (which made more sense anyway, as both of those kite designs were more latitudinally symmetrical than the Rev, and both flew significantly better in reverse than does a Rev).
 
jburka
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Thu Aug 14, 2008 4:36 pm

Zippy8 wrote:
But it's still a Rev., isn't it Jeff ? Today's Gemini is quite a different beast too but it's still a Gemini.

Right. Your Gemini (and mine; one of my favorite kites) is still a Gemini -- a delta that happens to have two spines. Of course, that seems to have been an evolutionary dead-end, as Benson and Wardley have gone back to a more common layout for the Deep Space.

I am arguing that your choice may have been artificially limited.


And I'm saying that as a flyer who flew on the east coast of the US throughout the 90s, the choice of quads was not artificially limited. The sheer quantity of non-Rev quads floating around back then was huge, whether Ultra, Deca, or otherwise. They were highly competitive in the SKCs of the day. And they all faded away. While I would probably agree with you that *today* the choices might be limited, this happened solely through market forces. People kept choosing Revs and the others went away.

I've currently got 6 decas in the house, along with a Peter Powell Omni, an Airbow, and a few other bizarre quads. What limited me to Revs?

I understand the brand loyalty that Rev. have built up, I understand that there are people who don't like to hear anything in the way of criticism of their favourite kitemakers


This has nothing to do with brand loyalty, and Rev isn't my favorite kite manufacturer, though I do count Ben D'Antonio as a friend. This is about whether the company has had the fundamental right to protect their invention. And what I keep hearing is that this was unquestionably an invention of something new and different.

If people keep thinking that there's prior art (e.g. the quad-lined, handled Wright kite of 1899), the patent system allows for you to fight the patent and get it invalidated.

I would love for someone as experienced in "the Quad space" as yourself to point out exactly how the Quadriphant, which was challenged by Rev. pretty damn aggressively, can be thought by any sane process to be a Rev. derivative.


The shape of the kite isn't derivative (especially as the Rev patent calls for substantially less sail area in the center of the kite). The bridle, however, is. If the designer (Nop? Or did he just republish it?) had found a different way to attach the lines and make the kite flyable, he might have been okay. As it was, he pulled the bridle almost directly from the Rev.

Again I invite you to imagine "the Dual line space" if Tabor's patent had been used similarly.


We'd probably all be flying Jones Airfoil Warbirds. And we'd probably still be having fun.

Really, though, a more interesting question would be to ask Don Tabor where Top of the Line would be if he had enforced his patent and if he has any regrets from a personal/business standpoint about not doing so.

Another interesting point...and I can only speak to the US dual line competition scene...but we've had decades of advances in dual line deltas. And where are we? Fewer people are flying and competing. Many of the boutique manufacturers are gone or have licensed their kites to the few remaining big manufacturers. Whatever happened to bog standard sport kite flying? When we held competitions in the late 80s and early 90s, we all believed it was going to be huge, that there would be major sponsors, big crowds, and so on. Where a major event like Wildwood used to have multiple heats for an event like IIB or EIB, because there might be 50 competitors, now Wildwood is lucky if they get that many competitors for the entire list of events, including quad.

Who's to say that the kite industry and offshoots like competition wouldn't be stronger if Tabor had enforced his patent?

I'm not trying to say that would be the case. I'm trying to say that we're still talking about businesses and they get to decide how they want to handle themselves and their IP.
 
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sftonkin
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Thu Aug 14, 2008 5:23 pm

jburka wrote:
...and all the others that have been named.


No, not all the others that have been named! (e.g. Quadriphant, Kamikaze Butterfly cannot export to the USA,......)
 
jburka
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Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:20 pm

sftonkin wrote:
jburka wrote:
...and all the others that have been named.


No, not all the others that have been named! (e.g. Quadriphant, Kamikaze Butterfly cannot export to the USA,......)


This is a fair statement. I used grammatical shorthand to suggest that all quads that have been referenced should be included. In my head I was thinking "all the others that have been named as non-infringing". This shorthand made sense to me as the antecedent was a reference to all four line kites.

My apologies for any confusion my imprecision might have caused.

My point still stands, though, that there have been a good number of revolutionary quad designs that Revolution has not gone after because they're don't infringe the patent. My comment about "all the others" was in direct response to the claim that Revolution only goes after kites that, "meet the condition 3<n<5 (where n is the number of lines)!" And I've named many quad line kites (and we're not even getting into foils here) that Revolution has not gone after.
 
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jr
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Thu Aug 14, 2008 6:43 pm

jburka wrote:
jr wrote:
Surely not the same handle design that the Wright brothers used in 1899?


Nope. Not the same handle design at all. The Wright Brothers used straight sticks, while the Rev patent calls for the handles to have two different angles in them. From a mechanical advantage standpoint, this is significantly different


I think even the best patent lawyer in the world would have trouble enforcing this one. Unless you really CAN patent a metal rod bent at x degrees :wink:


jburka wrote:
If people keep thinking that there's prior art (e.g. the quad-lined, handled Wright kite of 1899), the patent system allows for you to fight the patent and get it invalidated


It's all academic now, but I think if anyone had mounted a serious legal challenge in the early 90's any half-decent lawyer would have reduced the contents of the patent to the sail shape and the bridle, as a lot of the key points had already been in the public domain for 90+ years.

As for patenting dual-line sport kites, aren't they all based on the Rogallo wing design? :http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Photo/Paresev/Small/ECN-438.jpg
 
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sftonkin
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Fri Aug 15, 2008 7:44 am

jburka wrote:

My point still stands, though, that there have been a good number of revolutionary quad designs that Revolution has not gone after because they're don't infringe the patent. My comment about "all the others" was in direct response to the claim that Revolution only goes after kites that, "meet the condition 3<n<5 (where n is the number of lines)!"


But I didn't assert "goes after", I asserted "mind". Yes, I know that's unsubstantiable, which is why I qualified it with "Given some of the uncontested assertions in this thread, it seems...".
 
Stan Doff
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Sat Aug 16, 2008 11:10 pm

jburka wrote:
We'd probably all be flying Jones Airfoil Warbirds.. And we'd probably still be having fun..

No,I wouldn't.......and, no I wouldn't.
 
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oldflyer
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Tue Aug 19, 2008 8:59 am

This site shows some genuinely innovative quad line designs. I love the look of the Duo D'Arc

http://perso.nnx.com/dferment/summar2.htm#4lignes
 
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Jason
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Tue Aug 19, 2008 9:51 am

I'm not totally sold on the mechanical advantage of a bent handle. A bit like in the 70's when someone patented a bicycle crank with a 90 degree bend in the arm to improve leverage. It's totally pointless.
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Andy S
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Tue Aug 19, 2008 9:59 am

Jason wrote:
I'm not totally sold on the mechanical advantage of a bent handle. A bit like in the 70's when someone patented a bicycle crank with a 90 degree bend in the arm to improve leverage. It's totally pointless.


I'd like someone to explain the supposed advantages of the bent handles. Longer handles, yes, I can see that. Bent handles, I'm not so sure.
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