On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 5:09 PM, Mike Hearn <m...@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.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Accelerate Dev Cycles with Automated Cross-Browser Testing - For FREE Instantly run your Selenium tests across 300+ browser/OS combos. Get unparalleled scalability from the best Selenium testing platform available Simple to use. Nothing to install. Get started now for free." http://p.sf.net/sfu/SauceLabs _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development mailing list Bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
