I think this was the final patent on it that was valid anywhere, so now the status changes from "someone has a patent globally and we need to consider this" to "no one has a patent." If you're distributing something globally, even one market that still has the patent might stop you from default shipping a driver touching on it, or you might have to worry about court orders at least. It's hard to avoid jurisdictions on the open web.
alt Hacker News
I think this was the final patent on it that was valid anywhere, so now the status changes from "someone has a patent globally and we need to consider this" to "no one has a patent." If you're distributing something globally, even one market that still has the patent might stop you from default shipping a driver touching on it, or you might have to worry about court orders at least. It's hard to avoid jurisdictions on the open web.