Feb
19
You know what’s not cool? Publishing a book about building bristlebots – and not mentioning the people who originally popularized them (and whose idea you used) in any way in your book.
Not financial compensation – that’s not the point. Just an acknowledgement of where Klutz saw the idea in the first place. Is what Klutz and Scholastic Books did legal? Yes, probably. There was no copyright taken out by EMSL on either the term BristleBot or the actual device itself. Was it the right thing to do? I certainly don’t think so, but I’ll leave that for you to decide.
UPDATE: Apparently Pat Murphy at Klutz is going to try to contact Lenore at EMSL about this. Klutz is now claiming that they came up with the exact same idea, with the exact same name, at the exact same time (late 2007), and that it was an “honest mistake”. We’ll see.
