A Project only meant for peace and joy – The Greatest Sports Invention in decades?

It started as a project to make it easier to find opponents in some sports (hence the name «Oponentus») and ended up as a project that makes it easier to organize and participate in different sports around the world. Please send a message of concern to people working for health care services for psychotic people who say the name means «Opponent to the US».

The Oponentus system ideas include many new ideas on how different technologies may be used for different sports in the future.

The story behind

I started the project late summer 2005 with the goal of making an online system to make it easier to run a competition against another player (www.turneringer.no). It started with simple ideas but turned into a unique and complicated system during the years 2005-2011 for cup-, arena-, member management and rating with a new method for running tournaments by the means of a real time clock, a tournament time scedhule and the tournament partcipants (in 2011 it was a prototype for individual sports) . My motivation was mainly influenced by my wish to create an online system I could use myself to make it easier to find an opponent in different sports in a same system inspired from playing internet- and pc games in my youth, an idea I got from working at a callcenter many years later and my joy in participation in sports as an amateur.

I believe my independence to sports has been important for how the system ideas turned out – simply because I wouldn’t have the freedom to work as creatively for a sports organisation. Also inspiring my system ideas is my relatives joy in participating in sports: Every summer since the early 20th century my relatives have organised week lasting tournaments for relatives and friends at their countriplaces  in Norway in sports like Tennis, Badminton, Bocce, Croquet, Swimming and sailing. I wanted to make a system enabling people to organize and participate in sports in a same way but also other places.

While planning the solution I have therefore had both private and professional organizers and participants in mind – making it flexible and useful for different user levels, open for everyone or limited by community.

An intellectual achievment still protected by Norwegian law

The work I did was an intellectual achievment according to Norwegian law (just in the way work of artsists, painters and other creative workers is). Anne Cathrine Eriksen participated in this achievement through meetings we had by giving me feedback on ideas and plans I worked out. My work with Anne’s feedback was required for the project and lead to a very useful invention regardless of whether or not a patent could have been obtained. A patent was not needed for the work to be regarded as an intellectual achievement and has a value also today.

A separate part of the intellectual work was the programming. This was of course also important and an independent intellectual work that was needed to make a system from our intellectual work. The programming in itself had nothing to do with the work we did. When that is «said» there was an agreement saying that the prototype that was programmed belonged to the small company that I managed that programmers also had an ownership in.

When it comes to the patent application I was not given very good guidance by patent offices in Norway but better than no guidance. I brought papers showing plans and screenshots from the process of our work to the patent office in oslo and filed a «messy» application with more than 500 pages on 26th April 2011. There is no doubt that one or more pages «dissapeared» from the application either on the day of the filing or later probably removed by a person under influence by someone monitoring my PC in 2011. This partly sabotaged it but not the most important part(s). Page(s) showing a print of a screenshot with a correct tournament time schedule for tournaments having tournament officials was removed.

Had it not been for the special challenges I got after the filing I would have spent my time very differently in 2011 and 2012, and would probably have had the capacity of organizing papers in the application better after I filed it. I filed the application primarily to obtain an evidence of copyright of papers that lead to the work I had done from 2005 until april 2011 and had in the back of my mind that it could be that other patent rules in other countries could make it possibel to obtain a patent with help from from patent officees (unless patents for such sports systems is not given). For people who were not familiar with our work process it could have been difficult to understand what papers were and what papers were not relevant to the planned prototype in april 2011.

Also the work I did some years later,making team plans for the same system, was an intellectual achievment by me, and can’t be used by anyone without my permission.

A significant difference

The prototype differed significantly from other tournament software in 2011.
Now, in 2020, competitors have picked up the ideas from 2005-2011 many years ago but
the patent application is a well documented copyright document besides email correspondance and other evidece of where the ideas came from. The Application did not lead to any patent but is important evidence of a creatorship during the years 2005-2011.

Because the prototype and system ideas in 2011 only included individual sport ideas, and the project stopped because of very special circumstances in 2011/2012, I picked up the project and continued working on ideas for team sports in 2017/2018. These ideas were not been programmed as a prototype but include many new ideas on how different technologies may be used for different sports in the future. (see «New in 2017/2018»).