the time has finally come.
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!
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And this means what…??? 
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yes.
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I can buy candy dice. BOI!!!
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Basically it means if you use to use the little Round blue counterweights.
Now that the patent expired, you can play with your balls and Duncan can’t sue you anymore
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yes i can now play with my balls and duncan won’t yell at me any more.
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I was reading this old blog post I wrote years ago. So weird for it to finally come to pass.
Forgot about this quote of Steve’s I had in it:
“For me to patent a style of yo-yo play would be silly. First off, that would assume that I had the money for the patent in the first place. Second, that would assume I was making enough money off the patent to be able to defend it. And third, I am not really big on all that lawsuit crap. It’s what killed Duncan in the 60’s, I see no reason to be part of THAT tradition. It’s FreeHand, and it’s free. If you want it, take it. Just let it be known that I found it, that’s all I ask. (Please note that I take no credit for CREATING it…it already existed, I just found it. Yo-Yo tricks cannot be created or destroyed…much like matter.)” - Steve Brown 1999
We got back there eventually lol. Stoked for Steve and hoping to see a bit of a 5a renaissance!
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I love this.
The spin of a yoyo is like a key turning and unlocking the door to the infinite pathways held within the string.
What a cool toy!
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Its not like diabolo players weren’t letting go of the handsticks or anything…
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From what I can tell, all that this does is make it so other companies can ship a counterweight with their yoyos. But I really don’t think that the lack of yoyo+counterweight packaging was holding 5A back in any meaningful way. Counterweights are easily available separately (and heck, it is trivially easy to make your own), and if counterweights aren’t selling in huge numbers it is because interest in 5A just isn’t that huge. Throwing counterweights in with a yoyo in a retail package isn’t going to significantly move the needle on this, IMO.
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It may or it may not, but it’s not all about the counterweight.
For awhile about a decade ago, Duncan was sending cease & desist letters to companies which tried to sell counterweights under different names and threatened to extend their jurisdiction over the patent to include any kind of marketing tied to 5a. For a minute individual players were even worried they’d be litigated if they made 5a tutorials as part of another company’s team. Selling counterweights might not make a huge difference, but companies like Yoyofactory, OneDrop, Recess, etc haven’t been able to feature/promote 5a in any official context, including tutorials.
Where before beginners’ only official window into freehand was through Duncan, with the patent out of the way any company can get in on marketing the style and their roster of players who excel at it. THAT is where 5a could see more exposure, which could easily translate to a resurgence if not a renaissance.
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That’s how i got into 5a. By having a lot of counterweights that came packaged with yoyos helped me start learning more tricks.
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I guess I’m just not that convinced that the expiring patent will do much to expand 5A’s popularity. Maybe it will, but I’d be pretty surprised if it did. Only time will tell, I suppose.
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I mean we don’t see huge numbers of people doing Mobius or Double Dragon even though neither Zammy nor Kai put any intellectual property rights around those styles (although, it is my understanding that tricks using either of those styles will not score at a contest)
All in all, to me, parenting a style of play is the same as patenting a different way to paint, sculpt or play music. It just comes across as turdley
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5a is way easier to start than mobius or double dragon. they don’t even compare.
True, but, it doesn’t change that putting intellectual property around a style of play/art is almost as big a jerk move as trademarking a generic toy name so certain countries need to call it a return top.
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I think it’s called finding and exploiting a marketplace advantage. Patents are perfectly legal. Maybe there is an ethical debate to be found in the very concept of patents, but I’m not sure it would get much traction among large business owners.
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Next up… concave bearings. <waits patiently>
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I thought you didn’t even like those?
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I thought he liked to use them in his DV888s?
Pretty sure.
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