civil-law patents
How to deal with patents that others hold?
<p>I am an aspiring inventor and in the best case scenario I will be developing smartphones but something that is a huge hurdle for me are the patents that other people hold. I mean one company patented a UI with rounded corner rectangles! Is there any way I can create mainstream devices that have patented parts without being sued?</p>

<p>This is the video that brought the problem to my attention - </p>

<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0uv5jFaJFk" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0uv5jFaJFk</a></p>

<p>There is no patent on a "UI with rounded corner rectangles". There are several design patents (design patents are not patents) owned by Apple, Samsung and others on phone designs that consists of a long list of design features, one of them a rectangular shape with rounded corners. </p>

<p>To infringe on such a design patent, you need to copy the whole list of elements of the design patent. You are free to copy any single element of a design patent, just not all of them. </p>

<p>You should be more worried about several thousand patents that Qualcomm holds that make it practically impossible to build a phone without infringing on their patents. </p>
