Vlad, you have hit on the con of the helmet manufacturing. And maybe this new push by the NFL will help improve all helmets. Primary purpose of the helmet shell is to protect the outside of your head. Get hit by a flying rock, I want a hard helmet. But the con has been it protects your brain. To a novice on helmets that would seem logical, protecting your brain is a good thing. The con is the engergy absorbing factor, which as the article says, 1950 standards, Styrofoam. Go buy a helmet and cut in two. Then go buy a beer cooler that has plastic or metal siding, cut it in two. You will see the same product. Lots of 100% pro helmet people have brought up this point, only to be shouted down or their jobs threatened. The hard shell comes from DOT standards, FMVSS218. Part of the testing standard is penetration of the helmet. A softer or more energy absorbing helmet would be ideal for all who truly want to protect their noodle. Why don’t the manufactures use something besides a styrofoam type product? They don’t have to. It’s the law. So maybe the NFL can push helmet energy asborbing materials into the 21st Century…and design em so they won’t cause neck injury…and light enough where they won’t do what they did to Dale Earnhardt….the law of physics
Mac this is great. You clearly understand the difference between protecting the skull and protecting the brain. This is exactly what drew me to work for Guardian Caps – it’s the first step for the helmet manufacturers to move to think about protecting the brain. Right now, they are not open to the idea of the soft shell on the outside to absorb the energy, but our hope is that with the success of the Guardian, they will start to think about it. That’s when players’ best interests finally start to matter!
Let the NFL MILLIONAIRES buy their OWN helmets….as long as they have the team color/logos…..in the OLD days….they didn’t even WEAR helmets….but then all of the pretty boys would have to cut their hair.
Let’s take this as yet another opportunity to resoundly condemn our country’s broken approach towards copyright, patent, and to an extent trademark law.
We can all applaud the efforts of Schutt, Xenith, Riddell and others in improving helmet technology. But did you know that following Schutt’s release of a new and safer helmet they were sued by Riddell and saddled with a $30 million court judgment for ‘infringement’? And that they subsequently were sold in bankruptcy auction for $33 million?
We now live in a country where if you dare to innovate in a way that threatens entrenched interests or risks a decrease in a business’s monopoly rents you run a *significant* risk of being litigated into oblivion. Can someone please explain to me how this helps ‘foster innovation’ (the sole and expressly-stated purpose of such legislation)? Can someone please explain to me how the innovation won’t simply move overseas to a country like China or India that can’t help but mock our backwards approach?
Read this. Why would Microsoft pay $1 billion to buy patents from a failed tech company? And why would Google pay more than $10 billion for cell phone patents? The ONLY reason these patents were purchased is because companies like Microsoft and Google will use them as their own ‘nuclear deterrent.’ Nobody will mess with them from a patent litigation standpoint because the companies can now point to their own arsenal.
MS and Google just spent $13 billion+ that could have been put to a real and *productive* use in our economy. And the ONLY reason they spent this money is so they won’t get sued. How is this NOT indicative of a completely broken system? And how could ANY vulnerable tech startup hope to survive in this kind of climate? Would you invest your hard-earned money in a tech VC knowing that, in the unlikely event that such VC actually does get some traction, it will promptly be litigated into oblivion by any entrenched players viewing the VC as a potential threat?
It’s time to take off the blinders and view the patent system for what it really is– a new tool, government-sanctioned and court-facilitated, with which the entrenched can crush vulnerable and budding competitors.
If you actually know about the Schutt lawsuit their helmet was not innovative at all like you claim. The design was based on the Riddell Revolution helmet, which was one of the first big breakthroughs for helmet technology. All Schutt did was copy it.
Sean Payton didn’t admit shit, because they didn’t do anything illegal. All they did was pay players to play football, the same as every other team does. Just saying
Maybe a dumb question, but I like dumb questions.
Why isn’t the exterior of the helmet soft?
Vlad, you have hit on the con of the helmet manufacturing. And maybe this new push by the NFL will help improve all helmets. Primary purpose of the helmet shell is to protect the outside of your head. Get hit by a flying rock, I want a hard helmet. But the con has been it protects your brain. To a novice on helmets that would seem logical, protecting your brain is a good thing. The con is the engergy absorbing factor, which as the article says, 1950 standards, Styrofoam. Go buy a helmet and cut in two. Then go buy a beer cooler that has plastic or metal siding, cut it in two. You will see the same product. Lots of 100% pro helmet people have brought up this point, only to be shouted down or their jobs threatened. The hard shell comes from DOT standards, FMVSS218. Part of the testing standard is penetration of the helmet. A softer or more energy absorbing helmet would be ideal for all who truly want to protect their noodle. Why don’t the manufactures use something besides a styrofoam type product? They don’t have to. It’s the law. So maybe the NFL can push helmet energy asborbing materials into the 21st Century…and design em so they won’t cause neck injury…and light enough where they won’t do what they did to Dale Earnhardt….the law of physics
Mac this is great. You clearly understand the difference between protecting the skull and protecting the brain. This is exactly what drew me to work for Guardian Caps – it’s the first step for the helmet manufacturers to move to think about protecting the brain. Right now, they are not open to the idea of the soft shell on the outside to absorb the energy, but our hope is that with the success of the Guardian, they will start to think about it. That’s when players’ best interests finally start to matter!
Let the NFL MILLIONAIRES buy their OWN helmets….as long as they have the team color/logos…..in the OLD days….they didn’t even WEAR helmets….but then all of the pretty boys would have to cut their hair.
Just sayin………
Let’s take this as yet another opportunity to resoundly condemn our country’s broken approach towards copyright, patent, and to an extent trademark law.
We can all applaud the efforts of Schutt, Xenith, Riddell and others in improving helmet technology. But did you know that following Schutt’s release of a new and safer helmet they were sued by Riddell and saddled with a $30 million court judgment for ‘infringement’? And that they subsequently were sold in bankruptcy auction for $33 million?
We now live in a country where if you dare to innovate in a way that threatens entrenched interests or risks a decrease in a business’s monopoly rents you run a *significant* risk of being litigated into oblivion. Can someone please explain to me how this helps ‘foster innovation’ (the sole and expressly-stated purpose of such legislation)? Can someone please explain to me how the innovation won’t simply move overseas to a country like China or India that can’t help but mock our backwards approach?
In case you’re not yet convinced… http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120409-704792.html
Read this. Why would Microsoft pay $1 billion to buy patents from a failed tech company? And why would Google pay more than $10 billion for cell phone patents? The ONLY reason these patents were purchased is because companies like Microsoft and Google will use them as their own ‘nuclear deterrent.’ Nobody will mess with them from a patent litigation standpoint because the companies can now point to their own arsenal.
MS and Google just spent $13 billion+ that could have been put to a real and *productive* use in our economy. And the ONLY reason they spent this money is so they won’t get sued. How is this NOT indicative of a completely broken system? And how could ANY vulnerable tech startup hope to survive in this kind of climate? Would you invest your hard-earned money in a tech VC knowing that, in the unlikely event that such VC actually does get some traction, it will promptly be litigated into oblivion by any entrenched players viewing the VC as a potential threat?
It’s time to take off the blinders and view the patent system for what it really is– a new tool, government-sanctioned and court-facilitated, with which the entrenched can crush vulnerable and budding competitors.
If you actually know about the Schutt lawsuit their helmet was not innovative at all like you claim. The design was based on the Riddell Revolution helmet, which was one of the first big breakthroughs for helmet technology. All Schutt did was copy it.
Sean Payton didn’t admit shit, because they didn’t do anything illegal. All they did was pay players to play football, the same as every other team does. Just saying