On Tue, Jul 24, 2018 at 06:29:37PM -0400, Isaac Morland wrote: > On 24 July 2018 at 18:17, Nico Williams <nico@cryptonector.com> wrote: > > Note that it's OK to *accidentally* implement patented algorithms as > > long as the author of the contribution didn't know about. There's no > > trebble damages in that case, and no tainting of others, plus, > > contributors and code reviewers/committers can't be expected to do > > patent searches for each contribution. > > Non-lawyer here, but "OK" is not a description I would apply to > implementing a patented algorithm. You might be thinking of copyright. Of > course it is true that people can't reasonably be expected to do patent > searches, as you describe, but the patent system as applied to software is > not well-known among knowledgeable people for being reasonable.
Wrong. With patents the important thing is not to know about them when you implement -- if you come up with the same idea by accident (which, of course, is obviously entirely possible) then you are not subject to trebble damages. But if you knowingly copy the invention without a license then you are subject to trebble damages.
A lot of patented ideas are fairly obvious. That always seems true after the fact, naturally, but many are fairly obvious even before knowing about them. It's clearly possible that you'll infringe by accident -- that's OK by comparison to infringing on purpose. Nico --
If you violate a patent, knowingly or otherwise, you are subject to penalties (perhaps not treble but still penalties) and will have to remove the offending code unless a deal is reached with the patent holder.
It is critical that Postgres require that all contributors do not enforce patents against Postgres - full stop. That's the IP agreement that should be in place.
