Not to mention a patent should be defensible before you bother to pay
the many thousands it takes to get overall.   A patent has to be NOVEL
(IE unique) not just a different use of an idea.  There is a light stick
toy that's been out for many years, and you can bet they have a patent
on the swinging lights if they were able.  (Doubt it because I've seen
the basic idea from the sign industry for quite a while.)  Not that
Bob's idea isn't very neat and a very good one, just all the individual
parts have been done before, and that makes a patent almost impossible
to defend.  Not to mention you have to make a couple of million off of
it before it was worthwhile.
  Besides ;)  I have had a working system (running on a seagate hd
platter and then a floppy drive motor,  3000+ rpm was too much for
easily balancing a battery and pc board system)  since last summer for
strobing 24 led's on each blade of a RC helicopter.  You should see
what  a five foot disk of 48 2000mcd leds look like flying around at
night!




Mike wrote:
>
> At 04:18 PM 12/03/97 +0000, you wrote:
> >Maybe Bob should patent his clock before someone else starts
> >marketing it ...
>
> Sadly - that won't stop anyone from making a profit from it AND sharing a
> proportion of that profit with Bob.