With the increasing prominence of patent litigation, the FOSS communities ability to defend itself against patent claims is becoming more important. This paper will concentrate on one aspect of patent defense that has not received as much attention as it deserves - constructing legally robust non-infringement arguments.

In this presentation I will be concentrating on the software engineering process of constructing a solid non-infringement argument. This involves learning how to read patents claims, understanding claim construction, and how to present the patent defense proposal to a patent attorney.