Proprietery USB vendor IDs
The USB vendor ID is a proprietery namespace that seems to be incompatible with free software and freedom respecting hardware. But is seems that no one is forced to agree to the following policy.
http://www.arachnidlabs.com/assets/VIDPIDPolicyv2.pdf
Is there any law that requires you to buy a licence before using an identifier in your software or low level firmware. It seems that MIDI and other standars do have the same problem. Is there any risk of using the Linux Foundations identifier in your own free software project.
1d6b Linux Foundation
0001 1.1 root hub
0002 2.0 root hub
0003 3.0 root hub
0100 PTP Gadget
0101 Audio Gadget
0102 EEM Gadget
0103 NCM (Ethernet) Gadget
0104 Multifunction Composite Gadget
0105 FunctionFS Gadget
0200 Qemu Audio Device
I don't know for sure (I'm not an expert on this,) but could it be that the license is required to use their USB-certified trademark? Or maybe a patent?
It seems to be a trademark, but many companies just use unoffial vendor IDs. However if you do not include the trademarked logo then there is need for a licence. There may be some patents, but those seem not to affect software implementations of USB devices.