The PTP Choke.

[phantomhitman]

not directed at anyone:

Yeah, not directed at anyone. I was joking around because the conversation is getting a little serious and the mood needed to be lightened. I can act ignorant like the kiddies over at pbn but I would need to use alot more 1111 and !!!!! and few 33377700xurzz. Try to use this smilely next time when you point out things.

[SCpoloRicker]

Yeah, not directed at anyone. I was joking around because the conversation is getting a little serious and the mood needed to be lightened. I can act ignorant like the kiddies over at pbn but I would need to use alot more 1111 and !!!!! and few 33377700xurzz. Try to use this smilely next time when you point out things.

U r teh lamzors OMGWTFBBQ!!1

[edweird]

Yeah, not directed at anyone. I was joking around because the conversation is getting a little serious and the mood needed to be lightened.

Meh this situation has been needing to come to a head for a while... To be absolutley blunt I dont feel this needs to be lightened up and the symptoms treated until it goes away like herpes. Either [poop] or get of the damn pot PTP, cause im tired of companys fileing patents with the sole intrest to bleed it dry for licensing rights.

Try to use this smilely next time when you point out things.

[Lohman446]

Meh this situation has been needing to come to a head for a while... To be absolutley blunt I dont feel this needs to be lightened up and the symptoms treated until it goes away like herpes. Either [poop] or get of the damn pot PTP, cause im tired of companys fileing patents with the sole intrest to bleed it dry for licensing rights.

Umm... someone is using it, just not the someone you want.

Just because a company does not do what you want does not make it evil or wrong. I have already suggested what could be done if you think they are wrong and you want this.

[Chronobreak]

if these other companies arent/werent using the patent chances are we would have never even heard of this for mags(other than home mods)

fact is the 2-3 hundred mags would sell(while alot in mag terms) isnt even close to what ptp or anyone for that matter needs to build these given the parts required.

the parts arenot of the shelf(unles you want to sacrifice performance)...

also the pre-order thread said what 4-6 months? or was it 6-8?

so i would say about now were probly at about 4-5 months since the preorder started, but i cant check since RR went all kamikaze on his post.

stay tuned, and i can tell by most of the comments here and on any other thread of this nature 98% of you have no idea what yuor talking about.

as far as i or anyone else know ptp is still pursuing the product but in a cross partnership thing(might be the wrong term) we depend on k2 and other companies to provide the sale #'s that mag owners cannot.

i dont know how much i should say on the subject at hand so il stop there for know. and just say stay tuned, were not elft in the dark yet...i eman do cocker owners have theirs yet ?



and from nicads post its hard to discnern what he may or may not have been insinuation(spl)
but i doubt even a small comapany has the power to get the ball rolling with the #'s i have heard involved in this project.

also on a sidenot colin if you read this..since agd isnt selling slugs...are you not making kartas anymore? or you stocked up or..still getting them there just not available to the public anymore?

[cledford]

Not knowing all of the details - I can read and the patent appears to have been filed for the purpose of protecting the use of magnets in triggers. To have the pnumatic portion buried in a different section appears *to me* as an attempt (as suggested) to patent everything - after the fact.

I agree that this matter has been needing to come to a head for a while. I'd like to know how something that everyone is so ready to admit won't make PTP enough to break even on producing the frames isn't something that can be just "given" (or licensed cheaply) to the public domain. What's wrong with that? PTP (from their perspective) will never make a dime off of the pnumatic trigger one way or the other - so why be nasty and take a "we've got it and you can't have it" position? I just don't get it. AGD, SP, Tippmann and others have been producing guns FOR YEARS (magnet or pnumatic - heck there was even that RT cocker) and nobody goes after them defend their "IP" but it (the IP) is *WAY TOO VALUABLE* to let DW produce a hundred or so frame to apease the mag owners? Something does NOT ADD UP. Tell me how the the Tippmann R, the Emag and the other markers DON't violate the patent.

Break it down in plain english somebody - why is this such an F'd up mess? Seems simple to figure out to me...

-Calvin

[Lohman446]

Not knowing all of the details - I can read and the patent appears to have been filed for the purpose of protecting the use of magnets in triggers. To have the pnumatic portion buried in a different section appears *to me* as an attempt (as suggested) to patent everything - after the fact.

I agree that this matter has been needing to come to a head for a while. I'd like to know how something that everyone is so ready to admit won't make PTP enough to break even on producing the frames isn't something that can be just "given" (or licensed cheaply) to the public domain. What's wrong with that? PTP (from their perspective) will never make a dime off of the pnumatic trigger one way or the other - so why be nasty and take a "we've got it and you can't have it" position? I just don't get it. AGD, SP, Tippmann and others have been producing guns FOR YEARS (magnet or pnumatic - heck there was even that RT cocker) and nobody goes after them defend their "IP" but it (the IP) is *WAY TOO VALUABLE* to let DW produce a hundred or so frame to apease the mag owners? Something does NOT ADD UP. Tell me how the the Tippmann R, the Emag and the other markers DON't violate the patent.

Break it down in plain english somebody - why is this such an F'd up mess? Seems simple to figure out to me...

-Calvin

They are making money on it. From my understanding after offering it to DW and AGD they have granted rights to it to K2. They are not holding it in spite, they are holding it because they ARE making money on it (I assume they did not just do this to be nice to K2).

[rabidchihauhau]

Lohman is correct.

I wrote the damn thing. We did not 'bury' anything. We wrote the claims as broadly as the law allows. Pneumatic versions, electro-pneumatic versions, mechanical versions, mechano-electrical versions, electromagnetic, etc., etc., etc., are ALL covered.

Go hire a patent attorney if you want to find out why/how.

Sick of this thread. Sick of uneducated reading of the patent claims. Sick of lack-of-knowledge of the patent process. Sick of cry-babies. And most of all, sick of people who can't get it through their thick skulls that a company is free to do with their property whatever they wish to. It would have been far better if PTP had said 'we hate mags and our sole purpose in patenting this concept is to keep it out of the hands of mag owners/users'.

[cledford]

[dre1919]

I think the demise of AGD is quite well summed up by many of the points in this thread. AGD was a great company that made great mechanical markers back when that was what mattered. These days, the Mag doesn't compete with anything out there anymore. Look at the car analogy...the Mag IS like a classic car. It's slower, heavier, and actually made of real metal whereas the newer semis are all faster and plastic. The Mag was fine back in the day when all it had to do was compete with Autocockers (more or less the same type of gun) and pump guns. Of course, given those competitors, it would easily be seen as equal or better. But, with the advent of the Angels, Shockers, Timmy's and such the Mag was just done.

Throw in the fact that AGD consistantly never came out with any new markers that weren't an addition to the Mag idea or design and there you have it. Sure, the Level 10 kit was innovative, but it was too complicated to be properly accepted by the masses. I know first hand this was something that turned people off to it. Why should a kid (or an adult for that matter) go buy a complex kit that requires fine tuning to your EXACT marker, requiring instructions of the net to do so, when they can go buy a semi with ACE on it? There's no muss, no fuss...it works and that's that. Before even developing the Lvl X AGD needed to engineer a way for it to be a drop in mod. Plug and play. It wasn't, so I think in large part it flopped because of the effort involved.

Prices are another thing. I had an old school RT (easily the most overated marker in the history of paintball) and I bought a Hyperframe for it. Now, granted, that was the fastest guns I've ever shot and the lightest trigger pull I've ever seen, but for the cost? I mean, I spent something like $800 on the RT and then another $500 on the Hyperframe! That's just insane. It always seemed that when I wanted to buy an aftermarket part it was expensive for my Mag. In some cases, it was MORE expensive because it was for a Mag!

The Mag was a great marker back in the middle 90's when everyone played in the woods, some people still used pump guns with semis in the same games and nobody new what a motorized hopper even was. But, that day was long ago. People should grasp the concept that AGD is just biding it's time, unloading it's stock as much as possible before closing the doors. I won't be surprised in the slightest when I come here to AO one day and the site is gone for good. It's just the way things go sometimes, and nothing is more constant than change. Well, maybe AGD's LACK of change.

~dre

[Lohman446]

#4 Just because a company is "free to do as it likes with it's "intellectual property" doesn't make it right, decent, or good. Tippmann and AGD could have "did what they liked with their IP" and paintball would be a DRAMATICALLY different place right now imagine if constant air or HP/N2 had been patented.

Where would the mag be today if HPA/N2 had not been accepted as part of the paintball world? Yes TK did a great service by not patenting it and enforcing that patent however, it was not entirely without major benefit to AGD. The autococker, as with many other markers, is superior to Mags in performance on all but the most carefully planned out CO2 systems. HPA kept this from being an issue.

Besides, this was before the explosion of the sport, when it was run by gentlemen. We have the benefits of big business, and now the restrictions.

The patent, as i understand it, has to do with tripping a mechanical sear with a seperately assisted system. Much like an improved 'cocker three way. You cannot get around it by using magents rather than air.

[rabidchihauhau]

[/QUOTE]

[Lohman446]

Let's discuss the SP situation. Several companies with the cash to afford patent attorneys or with attorneys on staff (K2) settled it. I doubt they decided to just settle with SP for no reason. Granted, a million whiney players opinion is different, but those with legal knowledge or advice have, in the vast majority, settled this, complied with the cease and desist order, or taken steps to avoid infringement. Some of these were very very smart people with pretty good understandings of IP law.

The opinions get touchy when people with apparently no concept of the law and no concept of business or seeking legal advice, with little or no experience with IP think that they are smarter than those with experience in one of the above. My point is this: The companies that looked into this decided, at least the vast majority of them, that SP did in fact have good grounds to stand on. I take there decisions to have much more consideration of the facts involved than those of the people whining about it.

[rabidchihauhau]

[QUOTE=Lohman446]Let's discuss the SP situation. Several companies with the cash to afford patent attorneys or with attorneys on staff (K2) settled it. I doubt they decided to just settle with SP for no reason. Granted, a million whiney players opinion is different, but those with legal knowledge or advice have, in the vast majority, settled this, complied with the cease and desist order, or taken steps to avoid infringement. Some of these were very very smart people with pretty good understandings of IP law. [QUOTE]

I get 'touchy' when people compare what I wrote to BS, plain and simple. PTP patents were ALL ABOUT being legit. Yes, grab as much territory as possible with the claims (that's what they are there for), no, don't do it in a fallacious manner - no making up new meanings for words that are only reflexively defined, no claiming that something doesn't exist when it does, no pretending to know what your competitor had in mind when they wrote their claims.

BUt what really gets my goat is that the upset and misunderstanding is almost entirely due to not knowing what a patent really is and what a claim really is. People think its inherently 'unfair' not because it is, but because they don't understand what's been granted. You get granted the right to keep others from making or using your design. NOT a right to make. You can sit on a patent your entire life and NEVER do anything with it except to send C&D letters out and accept royalty payments in.

You get 21 years to make back your R&D investment and realize a profit.

Claims cover the invention and describe what it does. A strong patent covers ALL of the territory anticipated by the design (hey, we can use screws instead of nails), alternative materials or formulations, etc. YOU ARE NOT WRITING GOOD CLAIMS UNLESS YOU COVER ALL OF THE POSSIBLY IMAGINED METHODS. If you don't, what's the point? You may as well call up your competitor and say 'hello, just thought you might like to know that you can get around my patent by substituting glue for nails...'

I don't walk into MIT and start arguing cosmology with the eggheads there because I don't know enough about the subject not to look like an idiot. (I do have a few suggestions for Hawkings tho...)

The purpose and nature of patents is to spur innovation and to reward those who spend money on the same. A patent that isn't written well is not worth the money. By LAW, you are being granted the right to prevent others from using the same.

Is that clear enough?

[MicroMiniMe]

Is that clear enough?

I don't know. Zealots are supposed to be pretty resistant to change and acceptance outside their views.

The most distant glimmer of ANY future product for Automag owners seems to get people a little too riled up. Even when the hAIR was being talked about and tested it was being hinted that the production cost and market share wasn't that great of a prospect to start with. No one could take it to heart and accept that then. I'm not sure why so many can't see that this 'second' round with PTPs model prototype not going forward or going slowly to production.