It is very interesting how patent law is now entering the greater engineering popular culture with full force. While I hate to be an elitist, I must mention tha

It is very interesting how patent law is now entering the greater engineering popular culture with full force. While I hate to be an elitist, I must mention that patents tend to be complex documents and the full scope of the patent is usually very different than what a quick read by a non-expert suggests. The scope of protection of patents is supposed to be described and defined very precisely. And unless one fully understands that scope of protection it is meaningless to say how important or crucial any particular patent is. In my experience, most journalists and bloggers do not show such understanding (with the exception of a couple of patent attorney bloggers). I only gave this one a cursory look, but it does not seem to be that big of a deal. It seems like it would not be too difficult to engineer around it.