[zoson]

Word. All this arguing about design is silly. We know where credit is due here.

Patents are filed for intellectual property, and the property of intellect in these cases would be limited to the specific design filed with the patent office. For the simple fact stated by many that the patent office would NOT grant a patent for drilling holes or cutting fins into a copper block in this fashion. Had there been NO previous attempts at ideas like this (which I think you all will agree there are numerous) THEN this could have been an issue. But because these blocks were released in a public place, no patent can be filed on the implementation.

Thus, regardless if there was a patent filed on the whitewater or cascade (which there is not), this block would NOT be the same in the patent office's eyes.

So lets all just get along. I for one plan on buying this block from DD to compare against my roommate's whitewater because it looks like a good implementation of several technologies...
-Zoson