Are legal questions about patents within the scope of this site?

Question

The scope of this site is stated to include:

• Statutes or court decisions
• Legal terms and language, doctrines and theory
• Legal process and procedure
• Historical legal applications
• Dealing with legal professionals

Questions about patents seem to fit within this scope. In particular, such questions will tend to be about statutes, court decisions, and/or legal process and procedure.

Further, this meta discussion appears to include a general consensus that questions about "US patent law or the patent approval process" are certainly within the scope of this site, and accepts that, at the least, the scope of this site and patents.stackexchange.com overlap significantly.

However, a number of questions about patents on this site have been flagged for closure as off-topic because they belong on patents.stackexchange.com. Would such closures be appropriate, or can users continue to ask questions about patent law on this site?

Answer 1

General Stack Exchange norm: Just because a question can be (more) on-topic on one SE site does not mean it can't be asked on another SE site where it is on-topic.

Not everybody knows this convention, nor does everyone always agree on whether a particular question is on-topic. It might seem that some users reflexively flag any question about patents for migration to Patents.SE. The fact that a flag has been raised does not mean that it is correct or that it will be sustained by the community.

Hence, as you point out: Questions about patent law can certainly be on-topic here.

Closure/migration is only appropriate if either:

1. The question is off-topic here (usually because it is a request for specific legal advice, or does not deal with the legal aspect of patents – DPenner1's answer to the other meta question gives good examples).

2. The question author requests migration.