I'm glad to see someone on pinside seems to understand there is a difference between a design and a utility patent. Most people seem to think if you change the smallest of things on something (ex: a square hole to a round hole) it is a legitimate way to get around a patent.

The short of it is, a design patent protects what something looks like and a utility patent protects a products use and purpose.

- Douglas A. Hanselman inventor of the "Pinball Speaker Light Plate" pat. pend.

I think there are some misconceptions about this thread. The thread itself was started almost 2 years ago. It had pretty much set dormant for almost a year and a half. A couple of days ago someone resurrected it.

Looking back I didn't see any mention of the site getting a S&D and the original post by robin sounded more like a friendly preemptive cautionary post than anything.

I never put any thought into it...I just saw the other poster say S&D and I knew what he meant so I repeated it without thinking about it.