[LAU] ot-ish: musical scales question

[Gabriel M. Beddingfield]

On Tue, 6 Jul 2010, Paul Davis wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 8:02 AM, Erik de Castro Lopo
> <mle+la at mega-nerd.com> wrote:
>> Paul Davis wrote:
>>
>>> please do not post patent abstracts to this or any other mailing list.
>>> US law poses no requirement on an "inventor" to perform a patent
>>> search, and a provable lack of awareness of existing patents does have
>>> a small but definite impact on the legal result of an infringement.
>>
>> This is in direct contradiction to the advice Andrew Tridgell (one
>> of the lead Samba developers):
>>
>>    http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/transcript-tridgell-patents/
>
> Tridgell's argument is that a project is going to get killed by a
> patent infringement anyway, so you may as well figure out what's out
> there to be as best prepared as possible. I don't think he's wrong -
> rather, there are different ways to tackle the issue. In the case of
> the (absurd) apple patent that was cited, I have to believe that any
> infringment case based on that patent is going to turn out better for
> FOSS if there is a robust independent discovery basis. If it turns out
> that lots of people have read the patent and tried to workaround it
> and failed, I cannot see how that would help an attempt to overturn
> it.

Also, Tridge's worst case is "the project is dead."  As 
opposed to "the project is dead and I am now liable to 
Microsoft for US $250,000 for patent infringement damages."

If you are ignorant of the patent you are infringing on, you 
will get away with a 'cease and desist.'

If you knew about the patent and knowingly infringed on it, 
you are knowingly disobeying the law, and may well be liable 
for damages.

-gabriel

p.s. When you apply for a patent there is also the "Duty of 
Candor" that you have to consider -- this requires that you 
list every related patent that you've ever seen.  Since this 
requires careful recordkeeping, lawyers recommend that 
engineers don't search for patents.