Development board's charging unit in a custom PCB production

Question

This question would be more appropriate for a lawyer, but maybe some of you from product manufacturing departments already know the answer.

Development boards like Adafruit HUZZAH32 ESP32 have an integrated battery charging unit, which might suit my project requirements. Since their designs and components are typically open-source, is it allowed to use it further - in own custom PCB product? Presuming of course that the product is targeting a different market industry than theirs.

I know no one will guarantee me not having any legal issues, but you might give some legal advice or direction.

Answer 1

It uses the MCP73831 charger IC from Microchip. It's a very simple linear charger which only requires a few external parts, so there's absolutely no reason you can't use the circuit from the Microchip datasheet which is pretty much identical to the one on the dev board.

Answer 2

This depends 100% on the license to their intellectual property they give you. No general answer can be given. An example for someone who writes that out very clearly is Texas Instruments. Last page of any evaluation board's user guide contains a variation of a legal text containing:

These resources are intended for skilled developers designing with TI products. You are solely responsible for (1) selecting the appropriate TI products for your application, (2) designing, validating and testing your application, and (3) ensuring your application meets applicable standards, and any other safety, security, or other requirements. These resources are subject to change without notice. TI grants you permission to use these resources only for development of an application that uses the TI products described in the resource. Other reproduction and display of these resources is prohibited. No license is granted to any other TI intellectual property right or to any third party intellectual property right. TI disclaims responsibility for, and you will fully indemnify TI and its representatives against, any claims, damages, costs, losses, and liabilities arising out of your use of these resources.

Here, TI grants you a very limited right to use the design. For example, if it's a measurement amplifier based on a TI opamp, and you replace that opamp with a drop-in compatible one from analog devices, you lose the right to use that design. (At least according to their own legal department. Whether or not that's enforcable for simple designs is up to a judge to decide, in any jurisdiction I'm aware of.) If you use the power supply unit, which might use non-TI parts exclusively, and design a circuit based on that for anything but a TI-component-based device, you'd be in breach of the license they grant you.

Other manufacturers have different terms. This is a well-known fact, and just as with software, you will need to check individually whether you're allowed to incorporate someone else's intellectual product in yours.

When buying from any hardware vendor (like Adafruit), you procure the right to a given number of physical devices working according to a specification. You are not buying the rights to use any of their (or their supplier's) intellectual property in your own designs. Adafruit doesn't have a general license for the designs they sell, as far as I can tell, but they have a few that they explicitly call "open source hardware". That will definitely come with a specific license that allows you to use that design – but according to rules, which might, for example, mean that when you use the design in your product, your customer gets the same rights about your device, and can require information about where you had design components from or even design / production files. It, again, depends on the individual license. Other licenses are just "yeah, go wild, and have fun. We're not liable for what you do."; no general rule exists, and in practice, IP licensing is a case-by-case thing.

Answer 3

The actual connections and choice of components of a circuit cannot be copyrighted, unless there is a particular artistic and not functional aspect to it. So you are entirely free to choose the same parts and reimplement the same connections on your own device.

The printed circuit board layout and schematic diagram are copyrightable as graphic representations, for the non-functional parts of the implementation.

This presumes that you haven't yourself entered into any further agreements, such as signing an NDA before receiving the device. If you have, copying it could violate the contract.

Answer 4

Checking out the product information on the Adafruit site yields a link to the repository that contains the board's schematics and layout.

There is also an associated license there that explicitly states what you can and cannot use these resources for.