Re: [mowbot] Legal stuff

Jeff Sampson (jeffs39 nospam at skypoint.com)
Tue, 24 Sep 1996 22:14:34 -0500

Dominic Peterson wrote:
>
> >Gee, wasn't there already a "MowBot" or "MoBot"? It was on the cover of
> >Popular Mechanics or Popular Science or Radio Electronics or such. And I'm
> >sure that is what it was called one of the two. So the name probably is
> >already registered, a long time ago.
>
> No, the Radio-Electronics one was called the "Lawn Ranger". Someone (Robin
> O'Leary I think - Yep, just checked) did a Web search and only found two
> other references to MowBot. The issue of name registration is a tricky one
> - does the 'net count as some sort of prior, public use of a name in a legal
> sense?
>
> >Jeff Sampson Minneapolis, MN, USA
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dominic Peterson Email: d.peterson nospam at qut.edu.au

No, no, no. Back in the OLD days. Long before the lawn ranger. Probably 15-20
years ago. (Any other "old timers" out there? I'm 40.) I beleive it was called
the MowBot and it was made by General Electric or some other big company. It had
at least one pretty good size deep cycle battery, xacto blade cutters, a nice
plastic body. It used a sensor to detect a buried wire around the perimeter of
the area to be mowed. It then took a random path to cut the grass, turning when
it detected the wire. To show how old it was, I don't think it had an alarm if
it was picked up. Back when people wouldn't steal things out of your yard.

I suppose people have never heard of a FlyMow either. I could have bought one
about 3 years ago. But I must have been crazy at the time because I didn't.

-- 
Jeff Sampson  Minneapolis, MN, USA
(Toshiba T6963 and EPSON/SMOS SED1330 LCD Controllers)
jeffs39 nospam at skypoint.com
http://www.skypoint.com/~jeffs39