> "Flow Hive" device was previously invented and patented in 1939 
>  by Juan Bizarro (spanish), USA / Spain office;  patent US2223561A

Not exactly "plagiarism", the prior art simply puts some sharp limitations
of the claims to exclusivity that can be made by these new inventors.

I mentioned that prior patent here:
http://community.lsoft.com/scripts/wa-LSOFTDONATIONS.exe?A2=ind1502&L=BEE-L&
D=0&P=69872
http://tinyurl.com/p2b4thu

Here's the deal - the old patent has clearly long since expired, so that
older design is "in the public domain".  A new patent for the "Flow" frames
really does not matter, as the practical barrier to competition will be the
expense of the tooling and the learning curve required to manufacture such
parts versus the tiny market for this thing.  That said, even the Hackler
Honey Punch is still carried in many catalogs, even though it has "no
practical value or application in the craft of beekeeping", to paraphrase
the evaluation of Allen Dick (is he still off sailing?).

Now that they clearly have enough money for tooling and several
manufacturing runs to work out problems and fill distribution pipelines, the
patent need not be awarded at all, and may have been a complete sham anyway
- nothing but part of the promotional effort, just like the slickly-produced
video.

Given the relatively small market for this, these guys may had already made
all the "profits" they can ever expect from their indegogo fundraiser.

I just hope for their sakes that they really deliver working products per
their video, as prior "failures to deliver" things paid for in advance, such
as queens, packages, and even a much-discussed low-end semi-auto honey stix
filler gizmo, have resulted in beekeepers grouping together to involve law
enforcement in the retrieval of their deposits.  That would be bad juju.

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