This is what I’m arguing is a matter of opinion. I know there are people who would tell you they prefer the play of a KonKave bearing over CenterTrac.
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Superior or not, it is clearly a different solution than the KonKave, hence my point:
It isn’t a “technical legal workaround”, it is in fact a different solution.
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Yeah, I wasn’t arguing that point. However, your sensibilities are not everyones, and in particular apparently not One Drop’s! 
And as I said above, it’s also a preference of theirs.
I don’t mean to put words in their mouth, it’s just something they’ve said in the past.
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Good luck driving that one home… 
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Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure the patent office is gonna fall on my side of the interpretive fence here. It kinda already has.
But more philosophically, I think they are in fact different solutions to slightly different problems.
(as an aside: to say that Frank categorically owns all non-flat bearing shapes because he invented concave … well, that’s kind of a non starter, isn’t it?)
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Yeah, and I hear that scoundrel Frank Difeo, is living on his own private island in the Caribbean, sipping Pina Coladas! He sails around on a big fancy yacht made entirely of flat bearings…
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The flat 10-ball bearings that come in One Drops are amazing in terms of smoothness and spin speed/duration. But I am simply not skilled enough to enjoy them. I have pulled them out of every single OD I own, replaced primarily with grooved concave bearings. However, I am hanging on to the flat bearings so that when my skills improve sufficiently, I can start putting them back into my OD throws.
In other words, I’m not good enough for them, rather than the other way around.
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Quit telling yourself that!
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It is simply an observation I arrived at empirically. 
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You’ve gotta pull off the training wheels eventually, flat bearings really aren’t that bad.
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They’re not bad, but not better than any string-centering bearing.
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Agreed! “Eventually” being the operative word there. I will when I feel the time is right. 
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Yeah, and you’ve got 4 VTWOs! Put the flat in one, and see how you’ll get better at plane adjustments.
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I’m not picking on you, it’s just not good to keep telling yourself that you can’t do something or that you’re not good enough:
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They are very expensive. It would raise the price of the yoyos. Again, we focus on making our bearing posts correct so players can put the bearing they like on the yoyo.
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Yo, flat bearings are the best in my opinion. When layering strings, flat bearings allow the strings to slide out as needed, but concaves push the strings against each other in the center. I like concave for some things (like horizontal play), but:
Flat bearing = smoother play
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Heck yeah, that was something I noticed some other highly experienced players say. It makes sense to me.
I leave my 10 balls in my OD’s and my centertracs in the yoyos they come with. I enjoy the variety, and the 10ball helps me improve my skill. Like doc says, it’s smoother if you keep it on plain.
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Doc Pop has been consistent in this opinion for a long time, and it makes a lot of sense.
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Exactly. It’s about respect for the invention, not about the legalities.
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What is your point? That Mr. Difeo deserves a moderate amount of money for patenting the idea of a curved bearing into a yo-yo? What amount of money, extracted from the yo-yo public, is acceptable to you? What makes you the arbiter of how much of my money Mr. Difeo deserves?
How is a curved bearing something I need to pay Mr. Difeo for at all? The same curved bearing in my lawnmower yields nothing to him. But magically, when put into a yo-yo; I owe Mr. Difeo for the privilege? That is called a shake-down operation where I come from.
Seriously guys, where does this Arthurian idea of some kind of honor and chivalry come into all of this? We have been down this rat-hole with the yoyojam patent that had held-back yo-yo innovation for over a decade. It took Yoyorecreation; selling online and the $$$ of Yoyofactory to finally lay this anti-innovation, non-defensible patent to rest.
By not “respecting” something that never should have been in existence in the first place we got a whole new world of yo-yo innovation and performance. All because someone chose to think for themselves.
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