A guy that taught me a lot about designing hardware said his company refused to sell to U.S. buyers specifically to avoid patent suits. He said it's also why th

A guy that taught me a lot about designing hardware said his company refused to sell to U.S. buyers specifically to avoid patent suits. He said it's also why they did so much obfuscation and NDA's. He said it also works so long as they don't pay a company like ChipWorks to reverse engineer your stuff looking for infringements. Then, it still works given that's expensive enough that most parties that could sue won't do it. So, obfuscation and staying away from U.S. were effective strategies. I thought it had negative implications for competitiveness or financial sustainability of open-source hardware. On top of regular challenges, they might get sued more since the infringement is visible in the source.