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Comment by sarajo | Hacker News Reader

Hi! Our patent covers the ability to communicate from wearable to wearable using BLE. I hope that he fact that we're completely open source, from hardware to firmware to software, encourages others to share.

As far as advertising, I get that. Feedback received. Thanks.

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"Our patent covers the ability to communicate from wearable to wearable using BLE"

What?? So you took an open standard (BLE) others have made available for you that is designed for such applications in mind, stuffed it into generic item (bracelet) and want to patent it? So if I wanted to make BLE connected socks I owe you royalty? Sorry, but in such case, I sincerely hope your patent will be thwarted.

That shouldn't be patentable. Bluetooth's entire purpose is to serve as a means for devices to communicate.

It's like patenting idea of using TCP/IP to send packets of data over a computer network.

While I second the first commenter in hoping that you succeed, I also really hope you never get that patent. That's almost as bad as Apple patenting rounded rectangles.

> That's almost as bad as Apple patenting rounded rectangles.

It's worse. The rounded rectangle patent was a design patent, by the wording used above I'm guessing they're after a utility patent.

Open source licenses traditionally have give permission for people to do what would otherwise be prohibited by copyright law; i.e. copying, modifying and redistributing the software. But if you have a patent, people are still forbidden from doing that, by patent law.

The way out for you would be to use one of the license texts which include a patent grant in addition to copyright license; e.g. either the GPLv3 or Apache 2 licenses.

Of course, if you do that, one could well ask what you wanted the patent for in the first place.

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