On 24 Jul 2003, Gush wrote:

> Hey group. Been a lurker in r.s.p for a while, and was surprised no
> one has posted this little nugget yet.

That may be because your average RSP poster is a little more worldly than
your average web board poster.

All I really see here is a bunch of hypocracy. Smart Parts is hardly the
first company to try and use patents to corner a market, and no one has
had any problems with it in the past. Maybe Smart Parts is about to do it
better (or worse) than others have, but it's a perfectly valid business
technique.


Either Smart Parts does hold valid patents on electronic markers - in
which case they deserve to excercise them - or they don't, which will
become apparent in court. Fact of the matter is 95% of the people making
electronic markers today got the idea from somebody else, so paying
royalties on that idea is only fair.


Regardless, I doubt Smart Parts would be so dumb as to do anything which
would cause players to just stop buying electo markers entirely. They'll
probably (if they successfully defend the patent in court) license the
patent at a reasonable fee and make some reasonable revenue. If they try
and add $75 to the cost of a $200 sear tripper, people will just go back
to buying 98's and Spyder clones. Smart Parts knows this, so they
probably won't do anything to push costs up more than a few bucks a gun.


And if they did indeed come up with the electronic marker idea, that's a
few bucks they earned.


- Chris

<<And if they did indeed come up with the electronic marker idea, that's a
few bucks they earned.>>

They didn't come up with the idea. Haven't you been in paintball long enough
to know that. WDP was creating the angel before PVI started making the
shocker. PVI and SP just rushed the shocker to the market, which is why it was
a piece of crap. WDP didn't even create the electro an electro air gun was
around before paintball.