Hi Bryan, welcome
[snip]patents[/snip]
At last years open hardware camp in London there was A legal chap whose name escapes me (anyone else remember) who had spent quite a bit of time investigating opeh source hardware and patents from alegal perspective. To concur with yourself, his advice was also to publish early for reasons of prior art etc.. This won't stop the ringfencing practices that many predatory organisations in IP practice but it at least begins to weaken the drive by patent spats I guess.
I seem to remember some large donations of patents to good causes some time ago maybe it was by IBM to the EFF or some other org
AS for licenses this is still very much of an issue.
Obviously things like GNU/BSD only cover the software and or documents like schematics, pcb layouts/gerbers and CAD files. Providing copyleft on the hardware itself is still an issue (Wonders what RepRap uses?). In reality I see we will need multiple licenses and or copyrights etc.. to accompany any opensource hardware project. I would also like to see BSD like hardware usage where it can be commercialised as well as the copyleft like agreements for hardware
regards Al