I'm seeing a lot of people complaining about VHDL and praising verilog, but I've used both and I'd say that the difficulties encountered with one will be seen with both. A lot of these complaints are just people who did some programming in VHDL and hated it. Using an HDL is not like using a normal programming language, and getting over that hurdle is what will be difficult for most people.

As far as what to teach in the class, identify what hardware you are going to use first, and then look at the tutorials supplied by the company supplying the boards. Most companies (Xilinx, Altera, to name a few) have tutorials they supply to use on their boards, that you can use as a first-step in designing coursework. I would make the language decision after checking what is supplied by the company.

-T

Filing fees, while costing money, are nowhere near the same cost as the hourly pay for most attorneys. I'd expect that even if the case continued for years, the expenses could never go above a few thousand a year. (which would still be quite a lot for expenses)

As far as drawing a lawsuit into eternity, that isn't possible. (eventually the justice presiding will catch on/snap). However, it is standard to play games to delay the court appearances to later times, and file many additional documents in the interim that need responses. As reading and responding to every filing costs time and money, it isn't very difficult to force attorney fees into the 50k-100k range (In high profile cases like this one, I'd expect much, much more). In most cases, people can't handle an expense like a lawyer for more than a very short term (even less than the 2 years you quoted), and the lawyer either stops getting paid regularly and pushes for settlement, or the client gets tired of paying, and drops the case. If you want a citation, go buy an account on loislaw and look for any suits that were dropped after extensive litigation, yet without resolution. Usually attorney fees were the cause (although it isn't officially stated, since it was just dropped).

Well, the advantage of a free lawyer in this case is that the record company can't just drag on proceedings to rack up expenses until she drops out. (A viable tactic in many lawsuits)

However, I'm worried about the lack of preparation time that the new lawyer has. He has to familiarize himself with all of the previous casework, as well as come up with a defensible position. (All in his free time too...)

I guess we'll see how it turns out pretty quickly.

Actually, a bigger problem with this is that there is plenty of prior art for this patent. Gotta wonder why it was accepted. I know that I've seen 'bonus points' awarded for giving an assist, even in a competitive game without teams.

Of course, that being said, this patent was focused towards competitive robotics, which is new enough that perfectly matching prior art is hard to find. However, it makes me wonder... Can I take an idea that is common knowledge and patent it in a new area? I can only see this making sense if the new application is especially novel.

However, in this case I don't see it as a novel idea (or at least not patent-worthy). All this is doing is limiting how people can score robot competitions, and setting himself up for litigation.

Does anyone know how much of a record Dean Kamen has as an aggressive litigant?

-T

It's not that people can't be fired at any time, it's that there are some reasons that are legally unacceptable for firing someone. Among these are disabilities, old age, marriage, pregnancy, race, etc. If you get fired for one of these reasons (and you can prove it) then the company did a no-no, and you're likely eligible for compensation. (Although proving it is hard).

In this case, the company is playing it safe in case someone wants to play the free-speech card. (e.g., "I was fired for using my right to free-speech. Give me money since you wrongfully fired me")

Or that's their goal. This EULA might be a bit too broad for something like that, and could introduce other issues. It depends on exactly what is said in it. The safest bet is to just not use your real name when blogging, and not let the company find out.

That's less of an enforceable EULA, and more of an excuse to fire. This way the company will have a (more) legitimate excuse if they fire you for something said about the company. They'd fire you anyways, but this just gives them more 'grounds' in case you go back and try to sue them.