[binarymax]

There is an interesting question in the comments...one of the patent claims specifies incrementing a counter - so is decrementing the counter instead a valid workaround?

EDIT: thinking more about this, what if you pushed/popped them with a stack, or FIFO'd them with a queue. Seems there are various ways around the increment semantics.

[slapshot]

There is a doctrine in patent law called the "doctrine of equivalents." [1] In short, it limits the ways you can use obvious work-arounds. In practice, it's very complex because there are often good reasons why they specified an "incrementing" counter rather than "any counter," but the idea is that you can't make a trivial change to get around the bulk of a patent.*

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_equivalents

* I am not your lawyer, get a lawyer, etc.

[JoshTriplett]

If the "obvious" in "obvious work-arounds" matches the "obvious" used to determine patentability in the first place, we're safe.

[pyre]

Semantics. Are you decrementing the counter by a positive number, or incrementing it by a negative number?

[xenophanes]

Yeah that's the point. Sometimes semantics distinctions matter to the law. So can you just decrement by a negative number to get around it, legally?

[nobody314159]

Semantics especially matter in patents. There is a famous historical case where a patent specified a horizontal beam - since you can never have a perfect horizontal beam in a real machine everyone was free to break it.

It's why every second word in a patent is "substantially"

[binarymax]

I would interpret the 'increment' in the claim to mean increase (by a positive amount). The proposed workaround would start at the end and decrease the counter.

[MichaelApproved]

Any workaround would help going forward but there's still the issue of past infringement. Invalidating the patents fixes both those problems.