With respect, I'd like to say something 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 check them out) BlueRail plans to open the API to JMRI 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 Large Scale, 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 patent, you can google "open source bluetooth train". So far I have seen this same guy start negative threads about this patent on ModelTrainForum, TrainBoard, OGaugeRR and the JMRI Yahoo group - that is how this story is "making the rounds" on various train forums and mailing lists.
Just had to vent. Back to having fun.