Legal Information

Created Thu, 08 Dec 2016 11:15:26 +0000 by woerr

woerr

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 11:15:26 +0000

I have been prototyping a product for some time and am starting to move to completion. For now its basically a shield but will eventually be replaced by just the pic chip. What do I need to know regarding selling the product regarding libraries, hardware etc.

EmbeddedMan

Thu, 08 Dec 2016 20:10:30 +0000

woerr,

If you are not planning on using the chipKIT name or logo on your board or product, there are basically no restrictions to what you can do. You can make and sell products based on the chipKIT designs and code without any restrictions.

If you want to use the chipKIT name or logo on your product or board, there are some simple forms you have to sign with Microchip (who owns the trademark), but it's very easy.

*Brian

majenko

Fri, 09 Dec 2016 10:08:15 +0000

The code is (in general - check with each third party library to be sure) either GPL or BSD (or variants of - Apache, MIT, etc) licensed. You can do what you want with it.

Most board designs themselves are some form of CC license (I use CC-BY-NC for mine) so if you want to use the board designs then check the license that is on them - "NC" in "CC-BY-NC" means "non commercial" so you may need to license the designs from the designer). If you are just incorporating the pre-existing board in your design there's no need to worry about that since you aren't copying or recreating the board designs in any way.

In general, if you use something by anyone else then just check their license terms since you are switching, effectively, to commercial use. 99.999% don't give a damn though (or don't know that they could give a damn ;) )

Of more concern for selling an electronic product is national and regional (and even global) regulations for testing, safety, emissions, etc. Things like CE, FCC, UL, etc. Most regulations are much tighter when you have a finished product as compared to when you are manufacturing a component or sub-module (like a chipKIT board or a shield) since at that stage you have full control over how the device as a whole is used (what firmware is loaded on it, how the parts are fitted together, what kind of case, interconnect wires, etc) which you don't have any control over when you're just making a single sub-module.