[Bitcoin-development] patents...

[Bernd Jendrissek]

On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 5:09 PM, Mike Hearn <mike at plan99.net> wrote:
> Most companies (Google certainly included) have therefore banned their staff
> from reading patents,

Bitcoin is not Google though, and applying the same patent protocols
to Bitcoin as in Google is drawing a false equivalence between the
two. Google can survive single or triple damages, so it makes sense to
hope that of those patents you necessarily violate due to the size of
your operations, they attract only single damages. Google has so many
fingers in so many pies that violating some patents is a question of
when, not if. Bitcoin has a far narrower scope than trying to take
over the world (and moon).

Happy reading: http://endsoftpatents.org/2010/03/transcript-tridgell-patents/

TL;DR: If even single damages result in commercial death, you better
pay attention to patents, to reduce the chances of accidentally
running into one.

(But Bitcoin is not ccache either - it's all about money and it isn't
inconceivable that a patent infringement suit might not result in
commercial death. The right answer here isn't as obvious as you make
it out to be.)