Just saw this in my feeds today from the Linux Foundation asking open source communities to “Stand up for Open Source Software Patent Defense”:
According to the page:
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is considering rules that will help patent trolls, raise patent litigation expenses, and increase the volume of patent litigation overall. We have seen open source targeting by patent trolls many times, including a direct lawsuit against the Gnome Foundation in 2019.
Even though this is happening in the United States, and they’re talking about software, I believe this will have global implications and patent trolling is relevant to hardware as well.
Therefore, I encourage those who can (you don’t have to be based in the US) to consider taking action as requested in the linked page, and add your comment on why we should create an environment that is friendly to open source software (and hardware!) rather than being hostile to it.