This is one of the reasons I sometimes commit code under a pseudonym rather than my own name, go ahead and litigate an imaginary person, I honestly could care less who holds what patents on my code - if it works I'm using it.
This won't help anyone. You don't litigate against software authors. Patent suits are filed (or threatened) against the people who are selling/offering or otherwise making profits from a plausibly infringing device; because that's where the money is.
I think maybe you're confusing patent law (which is a civil thing about damages) and copyright law (which sometimes has criminal penalties). It's not illegal to write and publish source code implementing patented algorithms. In fact: the patent itself is in fact supposed to be an officially published version maintained by the government.
At best, anonymous contributions might insulate you from being subpoenaed because they can't find you.
My goal is to insulate myself from the stupidity that is software patents, I generally come up with the ideas myself while working but then search for prior implementations to see it has been patented (some of which should never have been given a patent).
I've actually had a similar experience with this. I was working on our company website and came up with something remarkably similar to Amazon's One-Click Ordering System. Having ordered a max of 3 things off Amazon in the past 10 years; I had absolutely no idea they had any such feature. Continuing my work lead out to the architecture and rough code-outline of this (I was unusually excited so I did a bit of pre-coding). Then deciding to 'do my homework' I went off to find prior implementations; low and behold I came across Amazon's One-Click Ordering Process. (And also the information covering the two-click ordering process lawsuit that still went in Amazon's favor).
So my question is if I had implemented such a system would I have been liable? The sad thing is, looking at the way the patent system is now, I WANT to say yes. Even with it being my own code just the process being patented would have prevented me from using it; despite the fact that I came up with a similar process completely on my own.
It just seems to me that in a way the patent system stifles...innovation. I am now very concerned about putting my efforts towards something without checking for a patent first. I'd like to see someone with more experience and legal knowledge could expand on Patents and Patent Law in general.
