Open Source Robotic Surgeon 42
GlobalEcho writes "Researchers have created a second version of the Raven robotic surgeon, with open-source control code. 'UW researchers also created software to work with the Robot Operating System, a popular open-source robotics code, so labs can easily connect the Raven to other devices and share ideas.' Unfortunately for them, according to The Economist, 'there is [a] legal problem. Intuitive Surgical, the company behind the da Vinci [robot], holds patents that could make launching a commercial competitor tricky — at least in the immediate future."
RSA Public Key is now in the public domain. (Score:2, Informative)
Without patents RSA would have Bern a trade secret. while one can reverse engineer circuit chips to fabricate identical chips, to actually understand the physics underlying the design of an IC is far more difficult if all you have is some sample chips and IC reverse engineering equipment.
Patents only forbid cometing implementations not the publication of competing designs. That's why Fremont, California's SourceForge is permitted to provide collaboration tools for the development of the source code that captures only design but becomes infringing only when it is compiled.
Further patents are required to provide a procedure that would enable one practiced in the art to reproduce the invention. That's how all us Webmasters know how Google PageRank works, and that's what enables generic pharmaceutical companies to produce inexpensive yet highly effective medicines once the brand name manufacturers have been repaid for the billions of dollars and decades of blood, sweat, toil and tears required to invent a new medicine that will benefit all of humanity, in many cases for the rest of eternity.