Free Hardware by Richard Stallman (author of GPL & GCC etc)

[Fred]

An interesting article that you may like to read :

http://www.linuxtoday.com/news_story.ph ... 5-05-NW-LF

Basically he is saying what GrowlingandBiffo and Gartner and others have been saying all along. You can't do much about people making similar hardware to yours. Basically they need a patent on it first. I guess this answers that ladies question about her router idea fairly firmly.

Fred.

[jharvey]

Even Lockheed Martin lost when they had reasonable grounds of trademark infringement.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/li ... -liberator

Lets not forget our good buddies at REPRAP. They don't even bother with TAPR agreements, even though they're are in a highly IP based market.

http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/WebHome

However, if your concerned about legal issues, you can contact this nonprofit organization for help.

help@softwarefreedom.org

In short, if someone tries to scare you about IP and such, don't fret. If approached with a patent number, then work around it. Until then, build something great and make the world a better place.

[GrowlingandBiffo]

Patent Law is quite strange in many respects.

Patents granted in the US of A are not enforcable in the UK or Euroland.

B&G do not have any enforcable patents.

Patents and IP are a rich man's sport, from both sides.

Copyright is also fraught, with music the main area of usefulness.

Have YOU been down loading music form You Tube?

IP lawyers often try and bully, by quoting out of context, to scare you.

See link below for full Pat.
NB B&G and Lance gave Mark Amundsen, in the USA permission to make the V2.5 aimed at motor cycles (V2.2 with built in relay board) It is still in production in Euro land and US of A


http://www.megasquirtmaps.com/board/ind ... wtopic=257



If in the UK join the National Fed Small Business (£140) and get free legal advice. The AA of Biz.

If you are not a biz IP will not affect you.

Fred, feel free to move this post

Edit to add link and V2.5 info

[Fred]

In short, if someone tries to scare you about IP and such, don't fret. If approached with a patent number, then work around it. Until then, build something great and make the world a better place.

Indeed, that is exactly what I am doing, besides which, we are building something A very different, B much better, C not simple at all. So the patent they have doesn't even come close to us. Don't worry.

Biffo, your post can stay untouched. I have no problem with it at all.

You are 100% on the money with the scare tactics thing. This occurs with the police and lawyers ALL the time. The trick is to show them that you know better and laugh at them.

What I was posting it for was primarily Tara's router design question. They have no patent on that, so couldn't touch her.

The patent they do have is just a joke anyway : http://www.diyefi.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=200

Fred.