DIYbanter - View Single Post

krw

In article , To-Email-
says...
On Sun, 18 Mar 2007 11:37:56 -0400, krw wrote:

In article ,
says...
Late at night, by candle light, John Fields
penned this immortal opus:

On 17 Mar 2007 11:57:20 -0700, "jerry"
wrote:

On Mar 17, 2:16 pm, "jim menning" wrote:
"jerry" wrote in message

oups.com...

Gurus,

I need your help...

I am an amateur triathlete and I'm getting ready for the start of the
triathlon season and I had this problem last year that I'm trying to
solve.

The problem is that during an open-water triathlon swim I need to skip
a stroke every so often to lift my head out of the water and site the
next turn buoy. I usually find myself off course by a few yards and
need to make corrections. This costs me time from being off course
and from skipping a stroke. So, I had this idea to take apart an old
digital camera or picture phone and mount the camera part to the back
of my head and attach the LCD part in front of my goggles.

Sound

Will such a device be illegal in competition?- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Not yet!

---
But, if it's patented, it'll be illegal for you to build one.

A one-off for personal use is allowed.

No, it is not.

Yeth it is ;-)

Only for educational use (where the education is the patent itself).

But you may not profit from the "personal use".

Avoiding a license is "profiting from personal use".

There are some special cases that have been handled by additional
law... for instance cable boxes, homemade, for "personal use", were
legal until "theft-of-service" laws were written.

They could nail them for patent infraction too. It's much easier to
prosecute a criminal violation than a tort. The only thing to win in
a tort would be a license fee, or perhaps the "value" of a box.
....hardly worth bothering with.

Why do you think so many schematics are labeled "for educational
purposes only" ?:-)

Labeling it so doesn't make it so. Try selling that "educational use
only schematic" in the back of Popular Mechanics. ;-)

--
Keith