If researchers are prototyping a new type of network protocol, and I use their concepts to implement my own version (my way of doing it, 100% my code, different programming language, etc), are there any copyright or patent implications I should be aware of?
Would it make a difference if I open-sourced it versus sold as proprietary for profit?
Currently, the researchers have the source code available to download through Github.
I'm in the USA, if that makes any difference.
EDIT: I just noticed their README file on Github notes that they use the GNU Lesser General Public License (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html) which was chosen primarily because lots of their code base was ported from another Java project that I guess used it. I'm thinking that licensing versus patenting is still the issue, no?