Re:What's the story with the Makerbot patent?
by technomancy on Friday May 30, 2014 @07:09PM
(#7824580)
So in software land, we have licenses which include patent protection clauses. It's not particularly difficult for me to release my work under a license that would prevent anyone distributing it from engaging in patent litigation. Why haven't hardware hackers embraced similar practices?
[ Parent
| on HN ]
> So in software land, we have licenses which include patent protection clauses. Why haven't hardware hackers embraced similar practices?
Copyright is one of the three main types of intellectual property in the world-wide WIPO system. The other two are patents (hardware) and trademarks. Guess which one gets to trump copyright licensing and exist beyond copyright law?
This isn't an explicit answer, but related to your question: http://www.publicknowledge.org/news-blog/blogs/open-source-h...
My guess is that a lawyer (which I'm not) would tell you that the patent protection clauses you refer to only apply to the copyrightable material, and not the inventions themselves (even in software).