That'd be a horrible idea. Actively looking for patents to try to avoid makes you more guilty since you can't prove you didn't read the patent you infringed on.

That'd be a horrible idea. Actively looking for patents to try to avoid makes you more guilty since you can't prove you didn't read the patent you infringed on. IANAL, but I've heard/read that as an engineer it's best to avoid looking at and reading patents at all so that when you ultimately get sued you can claim, "I didn't know about it."