[Discuss] Legal Meetup Nov. 11th in NYC

[Alicia Gibb]

Hi all,
OSHWA is having a small meeting in NYC on the NYU campus with Julie
Samuels, the Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents branch of
the EFF,<https://www.eff.org/about/staff/julie-samuels>and Jason
Schultz, a professor at NYU who has researched many aspects of
defensive
patents <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2298593>. They
are both interested in helping the oshw movement.

Unfortunately, the room we're meeting in is small, so we are having a few
OSHWA board reps present and can only bring in 5 or 6 folks. We wanted to
open the meeting to any folks on this list eager to discuss lawyer-y stuff.
The meeting will be on Nov. 11th from around 10am-2pm though I haven't
gotten exact times yet. Please let me know if you have interest in
attending, and if you can't attend but have thoughts please send those my
way too.

Below is a summary of points we'll be talking about though the direction
may shift during as the day takes course. From the questions we get at
OSHWA, we feel the community would benefit from further legal knowledge in
these areas.

*Background:*
Oshw is typically innovated faster than the patent system can keep up with,
and the patent system is too expensive for small businesses. This was much
of the basis that the current oshw definition was founded on.

*Discussion points:*
1) Fears of someone patenting pre-existing oshw work and the USPTO fails to
find the prior art. (Hasn’t happened yet to our knowledge.) Includes fears
that the social contract as definition won’t be enough to hold up in court.
Similar case studies could help?

2) Is there another area we could put aspects of oshw that is not in the
realm of a patent, but rather User Agreement or Terms of Service?

3) Continue the discussion / brain storm implementation of the layering of
openness / laundry label from the discussion
list<http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/2013-February/thread.html>
.


Thanks,
Alicia Gibb
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