Date: Fri, 9 Apr 2004 09:49:03 -0700 (MST)
From: Spencer W Hunter <shunter@U.Arizona.EDU>
To: motro@lmgc.univ-montp2.fr
Subject: Tensegrity and prior art in the public domain concern
Message-ID: <Pine.GSO.4.58.0404090921040.4369@ptah.u.arizona.edu>
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Dear Dr. Motro:

Very recently, our library aquired your excellent book, _Tensegrity:
Structural Systems for the Future_, which I have eagerly waited for with
great anticipation.  I have been collecting several articles on the topic
over the last few years, and your book nicely pulls most of them together
(with the exception of those of Bin-Bing Wang, whose work I find
particularly influential).

I am writing to warn you or your colleagues that on August 14, 2000, I
posted an invention to the World Wide Web with the intention of putting it
into the public domain, which may have preceeded any patents on it and
rendering it prior art.

Please look under my "Zigzag-Strut Tensegrites" directory at:

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~shunter/cads.html

A direct link to the directory is here:

http://www.u.arizona.edu/~shunter/zigzag.html

Proof of my posting may be found in the Domesteading Archive at:

http://lists.sculptors.com/pipermail/domesteading/2000-August/msg00012.html

...and my announcement in the Google Archive at:

http://tinyurl.com/25lot

The "2V expander" shown in Figure 7.6 on page 194 is identical to my
"basic" tetrahedron; and Figures 7.9 on p. 196, 7.10 on p. 197, 7.11 on p.
198, 7.13 on p. 199, and 7.14 on p. 200 all show the square version of my
truss that wasn't built because I was more interested in the triangular
version later used for my self-deployable parabolic dome model completed
last year.  (You may also note that the "threeways grid" in Figure 7.16 on
p. 201 also shows up in Fuller's U.S. Patent #2,682,235 in Fig. 13b.)

If the patents preceeded my posting, then of course nothing has changed
and the invention is not in the public domain.  I do wonder, though, if
patent protections are the best way to disseminate the art.  While I
certainly agree one should be paid for one's own intellectual property, I
can't help but look to the world of computing and see the tremendous
utility of Linus Torvalds' (Linux) and Tim Berners-Lee's (WWW)
developements, most of which were never patented nor copyrighted.  While
it is well outside the scope of your book, I am curious about your opinion
on the matter.

Now, with that out of the way, I look forward to finishing your wonderful
book.

Sincerely,

Spencer Hunter, Library Specialist
gopher://www.u.arizona.edu:80/hGET%20/%7Eshunter