On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 3:23 PM, Mike Hord <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:mike.hord@gmail.com">mike.hord@gmail.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div>A patent is really (AIUI) just a license to sue an infringing party. A patent won&#39;t be</div><div>granted if prior art on the matter exists; OSHW is, by it&#39;s very nature, prior art. </div>
<div>That means Mega-corp, LLC, can&#39;t file a patent on a design released by SparkFun</div><div>and then sue SparkFun, since SparkFun&#39;s release of the design into the OSHW</div><div>community is pretty solid prior art.</div>
</blockquote></div><br>Not precisely. It&#39;s my understanding that the litigation can still occur even in situations of prior art. There&#39;s also a process to invalidate a patent by submitting prior art (I think), but then again some people choose to invalidate patents through the defense litigation process or something? It&#39;s more complicated than just &quot;yo dude, prior art&quot; because- even if there is prior art- the patent is still in effect, even if some of the claims might seem invalid, etc. IANAL.<br clear="all">
<div><br></div>- Bryan<br><a href="http://heybryan.org/">http://heybryan.org/</a><br>1 512 203 0507<br>