Since December 2015, Americans had to register drones that weighed more than 0.55 pounds, which in practice meant that nearly all consumer drones had to go official. Now a federal court has ruled in favor of a model aircraft enthusiast. In February 2016, he took the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to court in Washington. 

The judge decided in favor of dropping the registration rules, so personal drones won’t have to be registered anymore. As our infographic shows, even with the rule in place, it didn’t seem to hamper the proliferation of these unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), to use the technical FAA term.