Non-software products are quite complicated once you look beneath the surface, e.g. even a cheap toaster has 400 parts http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites

Non-software products are quite complicated once you look beneath the surface, e.g. even a cheap toaster has 400 parts http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch.html http://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toast... . Sure, the number of distinct parts would be lower (perhaps 100), they tend to involve more mature technology for which any patents might have now expired, and the toaster manufacturer probably buys many of the parts rather than manufacturing them themselves, but I would think that the odds of an advanced hardware product accidentally hitting a patent are significantly more than nil.