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== Licenses and Hardware ==
== Licenses and Hardware ==


In promoting Open Hardware, it is important to make it clear to designers the extent to which their licenses actually can control their designs. Under U.S. law, and law in many other places, copyright does not apply to electronic designs. [[Patent]]s do. The result is that an Open Hardware license can in general be used to restrict the ''plans'' but ''not'' the manufactured devices or even restatements of the same design that are not textual copies of the original. The applicable section of copyright law is 17.102(b), which says:
In promoting Open Hardware, it is important to make is clear to designers the extent to which their licenses actually can control their designs. Under U.S. law, and law in many other places, copyright does not apply to electronic designs. [[Patent]]s do. The result is that an Open Hardware license can in general be used to restrict the ''plans'' but ''not'' the manufactured devices or even restatements of the same design that are not textual copies of the original. The applicable section of copyright law is 17.102(b), which says:


:''In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.''
:''In no case does copyright protection for an original work of authorship extend to any idea, procedure, process, system, method of operation, concept, principle, or discovery, regardless of the form in which it is described, explained, illustrated, or embodied in such work.''
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