How not to run into the intellectual property trap on a daily basis?

Question

I found a lot of questions and answers about how to protect yourself from the so called bad boys/ IP thieves and how to enforce rights. As a BSD guy myself I'm not particular interested in this and I somewhat want to turn the question around and ask exactly the opposite: How do you protect yourself from getting sued?

In theory the answer is pretty easy: Just don't copy, but in practice? Basically the borders are very unclear and vary from country to country, but the major problem still stands: After reading so many code snippets (on here, CodeProject and others), working for a couple of companies, seeing so many designs and ideas on a daily basis, how do I make sure not to copy anything unintentionally? Another question is, how do you keep track of the licenses in your code? If you take a whole library the thing is easy and clear, but what about 20 lines of code found somewhere on the net abandoned years ago? Do you care and if so how do you deal with the situation?

Answer 1

It's very easy: copyright protects the text, so just get inspired and rewrite the text (code) only preserving the idea behind it.

Answer 2

The "bad boys" sue who-ever they want, regardless of what their victims have done.

Answer 3

I have yet to find many snippets of code on the net that didn't need adjusting for my own needs and/or refactoring to fit into our libraries in a tidy way. I usually use snippets as a reference material for writing the code as I need it - more often than not, I write completely different code, and just use the snippets to quickly find out the API calls I need to string together, or give hints about what does/doesn't work.

With respect to patents, very few snippets of code will be covered by a patent (firstly, patent holders don't tend to publish their work in an easily copyable form, and secondly most patents cover relatively complex operations that can't be expressed in a simple snippet of code)

Lastly, your snippets can be obtained from "safe" sources. People aren't likely to post patented/copyrighted material on SO or CodeProject (and if they do, chances are someone will notice and sound the alarm before you get to it). Most of these sources usually have a clear statement about what you can and cannot do with their content.

If in doubt, write it yourself and learn more in the process :-)

Answer 4

If you work for a company, contact your legal department. If you work on free software in your spare time or for a non-profit organization, contact the Software Freedom Law Center for help; that's what they do.