Patent violations?!

[Magnus Danielson]

From: John E Blacet <blacet at metro.net>
Subject: Re: Patent violations?!
Date: Thu, 11 May 2000 10:06:53 +0000

> IMHO: 20 years is the patent duration. (From Filing Date, I believe...)
> 
> Patents are in the public domain as far as reproduction is concerned.

Is it? I would at least spend some time ensuring myself on where the patent
document stands on the Copyright side. It is most probably so that the
copyright on the document is being passed to the patent office at the time of
filing, since otherwise they would be unable to reproduce it, but it is then
up to the patent office to decide if this has not explicitly been decided by
the copyright laws.

> I'm not sure what trouble you would get in by publishing a circuit
> derived from an active patent. Typically, if the patent holder notices
> this, they may issue a warning that the commercial use of the circuit
> may violate their patent rights. 

Publishing an article (or other form) on such a curcuit should be fine, but be
sure to properly reference the patent in question (since you have derived
information from that source) and explicitly notify the coverage of patents.
I think that if you use expired patents, it will also be usefull to do this,
thus pointing out that the patent has expired. I also think that the commercial
use part of usage is important to stress.

Once the patent has expired you are however free to use the material contained
in the patent in order to develope commercial products. This is how patents is
intended to be used.

> The key to understanding patents is that USE is protected, not the
> information. OTOH, Trade Secret laws cover the public disclosure of
> information. You would have had to sign a NDA or illegally aquired such
> information to be in trouble in this case, however.

Yes, the information contained in a patent is free from the day it is being
published by the patent office. The commercial useage is controled during the
time the patent is valid. The copyright on the actual patent document is
however a diffrent issue so direct preprints of patents is not necessarilly
free, I'd say this is something one has to investigate on per nation basis.

BTW. I think kit-selling companies/people better avoid solutions being covered
by non-expired patents.

Cheers,
Magnus