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Open source isn’t a “get out of jail free card” for patent violations. Despite how many of us here feel about patents, a patent is for a temporary monopoly in e
by colejohnson66 5y ago
Open source isn’t a “get out of jail free card” for patent violations. Despite how many of us here feel about patents, a patent is for a temporary monopoly in exchange for not “hiding secret formulas”. Open source/freeware/etc. or not, patent infringement is illegal. Independent discoveries (like this) do throw a wrench into that, but IANAL.
- sfblah 5y agoSure, but isn't it the usage in a product that's illegal, not merely writing code that implements it in principal?
- colejohnson66 5y agoIANAL, so I can’t say. You could try using the “code is speech” argument like what encryption advocates in the 90s argued. It worked then, but I doubt it’d work for this.