[DalekBaldwin]

I'm not an academic, but I read a lot of scholarly publications in computer science and I have never seen a single reference to a patent in any of them. Usually I only discover that something is patented or patent pending later, after some heavy Googling.

I copied down this quote from somewhere earlier this year but I can't find the source now: "One of the things they tell us developers here at Microsoft is that we should never read any patents. That's because you're liable for triple damages if you knowingly infringe on a patent."

[RyJones]

Yes, I went through that training, and that's an accurate summation of the commandments given. Do not peruse patent databases because it only takes one person at Microsoft reading the patent, and someone else totally unrelated infringing, to turn a simple "oops" into "knowing infringement".