

Open Source Hardware and the Law - neeee
http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/open-source-hardware-and-law

======
noonespecial
I know his focus was on cheaters unfairly profiting off the work of the
community and how copyright can stop this but patents can't. But there's
something else that current patent law does automatically do for OS hardware
that I think will turn out to be very important. Once the community creates
and publishes a hardware function, it automatically becomes prior art and can
never be locked away from the community by the (let's face it _truckloads_ )
of bad actors in the commecial patent space.

With the rate the open hardware community is growing, I don't doubt that it
will soon the the dominant force for small scale innovation in the gadget
space. I see this as a key part if the final solution to the "patent mess" we
find ourselves in today.

How much prior art is there on hackaday right now?

------
finnw
I'm surprised the article does not mention _firmware_. It is an essential part
of many electronic devices, is copyrightable, and it is not often feasible to
replace it with an open-source equivalent.

