Ruling in the Festo case in November, the U.S. appeals court in Washington, D.
Festo intends to appeal to the Supreme Court and has enlisted legal heavyweights Kenneth Starr and Robert Bork.
Festo has thus succeeded for the first time in creating an energy-efficient technical adaptation of this model from nature.
The German company Festo took the wraps off the BionicOpter, a remote-controlled dragonfly robot that can fly in all directions.
Festo intends to appeal to the Supreme Court and has enlisted the aid of the legal heavyweights Kenneth Starr and Robert Bork.
"The Festo case has a much wider economic impact than Napster does, since many patents will no longer be capable of enforcement, " says Edward Fiorito, an intellectual-property lawyer in Dallas.
"The Festo case has a much wider economic impact than Napster does, since many patents will no longer be capable of enforcement, " says Edward Fiorito, an intellectual-property lawyer in Dallas, Texas.
The Festo case, which appears to be bound for the Supreme Court, is pitting large companies (such as IBM and Ford), which say that the fuzzy equivalency doctrine encourages lawsuits, against smaller companies, which are worried that their innovations will be ripped off.
Festo isn't quite the household name that Boston Dynamics is. (And, really, we're not entirely sure Big Dog is a regular topic of conversation at dinner tables yet.) But, it certainly deserves just as much attention for the work they're doing with robotics.
ENGADGET: BionicOpter dragonfly drone flutters about, blows minds
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