Buck: I agree with everything Jay mentioned in his last post.

First, if you're going to market this thing, it'd be very worthwhile to try to reduce the number of MCUs in the product. I'm sure there are areas of code that could be tuned to reduce the MCU count somewhat. And with just a brute-force hardware solution, there are quite a few 8052 derivatives out there that'll give you more than 2 MIPS. Check out this news release Dallas Semiconductor sent to 8052.com about three months ago about an 8052-compatible MCU that does 50 MIPS.

Second, I personally wouldn't necessarily try to minimize your participation in the project just to reduce your liability. Profit is in large part defined by aggresiveness and risk. If you avoid all liability, you're probably going to avoid a significant amount of profit, too. Of course, if you want to outsource because you don't have the manpower to produce the product, that's another story. But I wouldn't outsource just to reduce your liability.

Finally, I wouldn't suggest banking too heavily on patent protection unless you already have deep pockets. Patents are generally only as useful as the lawyers you hire to defend them. Even if the patent is yours, you may run out of money before you win your lawsuit.

Best of luck,
Craig Steiner