http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2007/02/06/calculating-how-much-time-we-have-left-the-sequal/ Blog about geeky stuff Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:10:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.2 http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2007/02/06/calculating-how-much-time-we-have-left-the-sequal/#comment-46 Anonymous Tue, 06 Feb 2007 23:10:56 +0000 http://blogs.gnome.org/hughsie/2007/02/06/calculating-how-much-time-we-have-left-the-sequal/#comment-46 Not that I've ever been sued for patent infringement, but I'm not sure the "engineers shouldn't read patents" advice is appropriate for open source developers. The theory is that damages are three times higher (at least in the US) for "willful infringement". So if your engineers implemented something with no idea the patent existed, your lawyers can better minimize the cost of the inevitable patent lawsuits. But this is another symptom of how broken the system is, for the entire point of the temporary implementation monopoly granted by patent legislation is to encourage the publication of new methods for the benifit of engineers working in the field. Furthermore, it assumes there is a central point of distribution which can arbitrate on the behalf of all users and distributors, which is not the case in open source software. Open source developers are often independent agents, not members of a large organization with a separate legal team who handle the inevitable infringements (usually through cross licensing agreements if they're large, and paying settlements if they're small). If one is trying to do the typical free software thing and build an alternative to proprietary works, it behooves one to avoid technologies that are likely to attract patent infringement suites, just as it behooves one to use and write code with a clean copyright history which it does not attract copyright infringement claims. Unfortunately, unlike copyright, there's no way to be reasonably certain you're ok, but if you want a third option, I think learning to read patents with an eye to judging their risk, and on the other hand contributing to awareness of patent law, obviousness and prior art in the community is the best way to approach this nasty, nasty problem. Not that I've ever been sued for patent infringement, but I'm not sure the “engineers shouldn't read patents” advice is appropriate for open source developers. The theory is that damages are three times higher (at least in the US) for “willful infringement”. So if your engineers implemented something with no idea the patent existed, your lawyers can better minimize the cost of the inevitable patent lawsuits. But this is another symptom of how broken the system is, for the entire point of the temporary implementation monopoly granted by patent legislation is to encourage the publication of new methods for the benifit of engineers working in the field. Furthermore, it assumes there is a central point of distribution which can arbitrate on the behalf of all users and distributors, which is not the case in open source software. Open source developers are often independent agents, not members of a large organization with a separate legal team who handle the inevitable infringements (usually through cross licensing agreements if they're large, and paying settlements if they're small). If one is trying to do the typical free software thing and build an alternative to proprietary works, it behooves one to avoid technologies that are likely to attract patent infringement suites, just as it behooves one to use and write code with a clean copyright history which it does not attract copyright infringement claims. Unfortunately, unlike copyright, there's no way to be reasonably certain you're ok, but if you want a third option, I think learning to read patents with an eye to judging their risk, and on the other hand contributing to awareness of patent law, obviousness and prior art in the community is the best way to approach this nasty, nasty problem.

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