A self-balancing scooter billed as heralding a revolution in the way people travel could run into an obstacle in Japan, where a robotics professor wants recognition for inventing a nearly identical machine 15 years ago.
The claim comes a little more than a month after U.S. inventor Dean Kamen unveiled the "Segway Human Transporter" and Segway LLC, the company founded to make and sell it, ending a year of speculation and secrecy over the invention that kept the high-tech world in thrall.
"I'm not saying that they took the idea but I want people to know that it existed before the Segway was developed," Kazuo Yamafuji, Professor Emiritus at Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications, told Reuters.
"I made this machine 15 years ago."
More importantly, Yamafuji applied for a patent for his machine in 1987, which was granted in 1996.
Legal experts say that while it may be difficult for Yamafuji or anyone else to challenge Dean Kamen's U.S. patent, the award-winning U.S. inventor could run into trouble if Segway decides to sell the scooter in Japan.
With its densely packed cities and enthusiasm for high-tech gadgets, Japan could be an ideal market for Segway's machine.
News source: Reuters
The claim comes a little more than a month after U.S. inventor Dean Kamen unveiled the "Segway Human Transporter" and Segway LLC, the company founded to make and sell it, ending a year of speculation and secrecy over the invention that kept the high-tech world in thrall.
"I'm not saying that they took the idea but I want people to know that it existed before the Segway was developed," Kazuo Yamafuji, Professor Emiritus at Tokyo's University of Electro-Communications, told Reuters.
"I made this machine 15 years ago."
More importantly, Yamafuji applied for a patent for his machine in 1987, which was granted in 1996.
Legal experts say that while it may be difficult for Yamafuji or anyone else to challenge Dean Kamen's U.S. patent, the award-winning U.S. inventor could run into trouble if Segway decides to sell the scooter in Japan.
With its densely packed cities and enthusiasm for high-tech gadgets, Japan could be an ideal market for Segway's machine.
News source: Reuters
These capabilities are crucial underpinnings that will provide the foundation for Sun's push into distributed grid computing, he said. A core premise of this developing computing model is that servers will automatically come online to provide additional capacity as needed. But that process cannot happen until servers can dynamically discover and replicate new environments.
Ingram said that these and other capabilities inherent in Solaris will provide the foundation that will allow Sun and its allies to counter the vision put forth by Microsoft in its .Net architecture, which ultimately envisions a world where applications automatically discover and integrate with one another using Web services.
In contrast, Sun will use Web services to link loosely coupled applications, while relying on Java to link tightly coupled applications.
"In Microsoft's view of the world, everything is based on XML and loosely coupled applications. We see a need for loosely coupled applications and tightly coupled applications using Java," Ingram said.
Industry analysts said the war over the next generation of distributed computing between Microsoft and Sun is far from over.
Rikki Kirzner, research director at IDC in Mountain View, Calif., said the battle will not be won on the basis of one or two tools. Market penetration, cost-effectiveness of implementation, and ease of use will be the critical customer drivers, she said. "The companies have to make the solutions real," Kirzner said, commenting that vendors need to do more than simply adopt standards such as SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).
Microsoft, IBM, and Computer Associates are also working on technology to control and manage distributed computing environments to deliver Web services. But Sun may beat its rivals to the punch. Sun's hardware and OS components are stand-alone and proprietary, making the groundwork for development specific and more efficient, said Gordon Haff, a senior analyst at Illuminata, in Nashua, N.H.
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