CI License question

[eluser]Vheissu[/eluser]
Courtesy of the internet:

"Patents are basically copyrights for inventions, defined by U.S. patent law as "any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof." Unlike copyrights, patents protect the idea or design of the invention, rather than the tangible form of the invention itself. Consequently, patenting something is a much trickier procedure than copyrighting something."

"Patents are the most complicated type of intellectual property, as well as the most restrictive. To patent an invention, you have to meet a number of requirements. First of all, the invention must be sufficiently novel. That is, it must be substantially unlike anything that is already patented, has already been on the market or has been written about in a publication. In fact, you can't even patent your own invention if it has been on the market or discussed in publications for more than a year."

So are you telling us that your client has an idea so unique built on top of Codeigniter that nobody else has ever thought of or created (in any form) that it can be patentable? Perhaps if not a patent, then you could still copyright the idea / code: http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cach...Tdgz90HK0w

[eluser]trenchard[/eluser]
[quote author="noctrum" date="1287103287"]The license is very clearly defined at http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/license.html... If you're trying to patent something, talk to a patent attorney. I don't really understand the thinking behind asking for or giving legal advice here.[/quote]

Well the license leaves a lot to the imagination and it does make sense to ask the CI community about a situation they may have encountered. We're not looking for a legal opinion, but rather some insight from people that might have run into this.

In any event, I think we have worked out the question with the client. The code developed will be proprietary, but based on a number of libraries (not just CI). The patent will be pursued for the process.