I am sure the RISC-V core team has a much better answer. Their mission statement is a good start.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eecs.berkeley.edu&#x2F;Pubs&#x2F;TechRpts&#x2F;2014&#x2F;EECS-2014-146.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eecs.berkeley.edu&#x2F;Pubs&#x2F;TechRpts&#x2F;2014&#x2F;EECS-2014-1...</a><p>The good news is that RISC has been around since the early 80&#x27;s so any killer hardware patent will likely have expired by now. Note that the RISC-V ISA is separate from any hardware implementations. If you get fancy with your micro-architecture you can definitely trample on one of the 1000&#x27;s of micro-architecture patents filed across the industry.