This may not be new to the forum, as it is a 2014 patent application, and if so, I apologize to the group, but it is important enough that I thought I'd take a chance. Someone has applied to patent wireless control of model trains. Specifically, the application looks like track powered with wireless control. Those of you with any kind of business interest in this sort of thing should take note. There is TONS of prior art for this.
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Nothing new. Neil Young has a ton of patents out for TMCC and Legacy. DO a search.
Isn't this just for the Bluetooth control that Bachmann is doing?
Steve,
Why do you find this "troubling" and why post it on the DCS forum?
The problem with patents nowadays is the incompetent folks at the patent office will allow people to patent air! 
The thread I keep seeing reposted that this is a "threat to the industry" really has no basis, as far as I can tell. If you are interested in learning more about the BlueRail project, I recommend you listen to the various Model Rail Radio podcasts where BlueRail Trains is discussed and interviewed in depth.
none of those threads look current.
and one of them you have to register just to read.
no thanks.
Not sure how this ended up in the TMCC section, but I'd like to talk about the origin of this thread. There is a lone developer who has been working on an open source bluetooth project that he hasn't been able to get off the ground. (You can read his frustrated posts yourself). And he has decided the reason he can't get his project off the ground is because of this small development group (BlueRail Trains) who are planning on releasing their first products at the end of this summer. So he has started a thread in every train discussion group on the web trying to get people worried about this patent.
You can listen to plenty of interviews of BlueRail on the Model Rail Radio podcast, and its a pretty interesting project. They are developing plugin boards that can go in any train that you can run from a smartphone. They have licensed the technology to Bachmann as well. If you read the patent, it is not related to DCC and is no threat to anyone IMHO. And in the interviews (if you listen) they plan to open the API to JMRI (and possibly BlueTrain) and have also been in communication with the Open LCB guys, in addition to their plan to make boards that can go into any train (of any manufacturer).
I hope the product comes out soon (they plan to support O gauge, you can run it from 150 feet, and it operates Dead Rail as well) . And I hope the angry developer who has started every thread on this topic gets his board working and finds peace.
But the thread I keep seeing reposted that this is a "threat to the industry" really has no basis, as far as I can tell. If you are interested in learning more about the BlueRail project, I recommend you listen to the various Model Rail Radio podcasts where BlueRail Trains is discussed and interviewed in depth.
And if you want to learn more about the angry developer who keeps posting threads about this, you can google "open source bluetooth train". So far I have seen this same individual start negative threads about this patent on ModelTrainForum, TrainBoard, OGaugeRR and the JMRI Yahoo group (in an effort to advance his personal project).
I ,RT_Coker, am the “lone developer”, only I am not alone. I am the author of one patent and one patent application. I abandoned the patent application after finding prior art against it. I fully support valid patents! The real question is the validity of the referenced patent application, and I am not alone in questioning it!
A patent application means nothing of itself. And the detailed description of the invention does not define the scope of the patent.
All that matters is what "claims" of the patent will ultimately be granted by the USPTO. Most patent applications start with utterly unpatentable claims that are whittled into their final form by an extensive dialogue between the applicant and the patent examiner.
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