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At Mon, 5 Dec 2011 08:17:26 -0500, Emily Lynema wrote: > > A colleague approached me this morning with an interesting question that I > realized I didn't know how to answer. How are open source projects in the > library community dancing around technologies that may have been patented > by vendors? We were particularly wondering about this in light of open > source ILS projects, like Kuali OLE, Koha, and Evergreen. I know OLE is > still in the early stages, but did the folks who created Koha and Evergreen > ever run into any problems in this area? Have library vendors historically > pursued patents for their systems and solutions? I don’t think libraries have a particularly unique perspective on this: most free/open source software projects have the same issues with patents. The Software Freedom Law Center has some basic information about these issues. As I recall, the “Legal basics for developers” edition of their podcasts is useful [1], but other editions may be helpful as well. Basically, the standard advice for patents is what Mike Taylor gave: ignore them. Pay attention to copyright and trademark issues (as the Koha problem shows), but patents really don’t need to be on your radar. best, Erik 1. http://www.softwarefreedom.org/podcast/2011/aug/16/Episode-0x16-Legal-Basics-for-Developers/