From: "Valdis Klētnieks" <valdis.kletnieks@vt.edu>
To: Andrea Laisa <andrea.laisa@studenti.unimi.it>
Cc: kernelnewbies@kernelnewbies.org
Subject: Re: Questions about my idea (for gsoc)
Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2019 15:49:40 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <26523.1554148180@turing-police> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <316dadf7-29a7-4a2e-96e5-4e00e59d9286@studenti.unimi.it>
On Mon, 01 Apr 2019 18:19:12 +0200, Andrea Laisa said:
> My idea is to write a Linux driver for a proprietary network protocol
> used by the outdoor Gemtek antennas(which are essentially a LTE modem)
This may be a legal mine field. To create a *usable* Linux driver, you'll need
to have one that's free of licensing restrictions. If Gemtek claims one or
more patents on the protocol, you may be unable to implement the protocol
without dealing with the licensing issues.
And I'm reasonably sure that Gemtek won't be too interested in helping you
write the driver, because its existence would cut into their sales of access points.
Note that this is *different* than the question of reverse engineering hardware
or software for interoperability. Patents cover any use whatsoever of the patented
intellectual property, and if you reverse engineer and then implement, you
can't claim accidental infringement (which happens a lot, especially if the
patent ofice is lax on enforcing the "non-obvious" requirement) and you're
squarely in willful infringement territory, which in the US can get you hit
with triple damages...
(Note - I am not a laywer, just somebody who reads enough about intellectual
property law to know that anytime you see "proprietary", you are *guaranteed*
to hit some sort of intellectual property law issue.
_______________________________________________
Kernelnewbies mailing list
Kernelnewbies@kernelnewbies.org
https://lists.kernelnewbies.org/mailman/listinfo/kernelnewbies
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-04-01 19:50 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 7+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-04-01 16:19 Questions about my idea (for gsoc) Andrea Laisa
2019-04-01 17:16 ` Greg KH
[not found] ` <4d84791d-c866-da7c-7036-27b217a8062b@studenti.unimi.it>
2019-04-01 18:37 ` Andrea Laisa
2019-04-01 18:53 ` Bharath Vedartham
2019-04-01 19:43 ` Andrea Laisa
2019-04-01 19:49 ` Valdis Klētnieks [this message]
2019-04-01 20:51 ` Cindy-Sue Causey
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=26523.1554148180@turing-police \
--to=valdis.kletnieks@vt.edu \
--cc=andrea.laisa@studenti.unimi.it \
--cc=kernelnewbies@kernelnewbies.org \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).