I wish I could get defensive protection against the millions and millions of bad software parents out there. But there is no such thing.

Did you know that Facebook owns the patent on autocompletes? Yahoo owned it and Facebook bought it from them as kind of a privately owned nuclear weapon to create a doctrine of mutually assured destruction with other companies who own nuclear-weapons-grade patents.

Of course the penalty for violating a patent is much worse if you know you are doing it, so companies are very much not eager to have the additional liability that comes with their employees being aware that every autocomplete is a violation of patent law.