New Licensing Model?

[Clark Evans]

Charles,

You are trying to create an open source license for 
a technology which is protected by patent and trademark.
You are tying the patent use to the trademark?

"Charles A. Jolley" wrote:
>     This technology exists as a specification, a set of rules, that we want
> to license to people and then certify the use of this technology in their
> products. 

Will people be able to freely implement use specification without
reference to your trademark?


>     Basically, we are working on a license for the technology that gives
> people free license (as protected by our patents, copyrights, and
> trademarks) to use the technology in their products and limited use of the
> technology's name in relation to their product, unless they sell it for
> commercial use.  If they sell the product, then they must get their product
> certified to be compliant by us.

The above sounds like a restriction on the trademark only.  Correct?

> 
>     This license will be "viral" in that any derivatives of a product based
> on this license must also carry it and so on and so forth, as long as the
> product is still compliant with our technology.  Also, we will allow people
> to charge for the cost of burning CDs, etc. without needing to get certified
> and we will allow certain people to be exempted from the certification
> requirement, such as those who are selling shareware.

Those making money don't have to be certified?  this is not clear.

>     Now, this license only covers use of the technology and its associated
> name.  It will work such that it will go **along-side** any other license
> for the actual software/hardware.  For example, the open-source software
> that we release will be licensed under our license for use of our
> technology, but will also be released under a BSD or GPL license for the
> software itself.

GPL seems to be incompatible with any kind of patent license.

>     My concern here is that such a license cannot be combined with GPL,
> which obviously could be a problem since there is so much software out there
> based on the GPL and I would want these people to be able to make their
> products communicate using our technology if they should so choose.
> 
>     So what do you think?  Is this a viable strategy as far as creating an
> open-source compatible license is concerned?  Would there be open-source
> licenses that this technology license could go along-side of?

It's traditional for people to be able to implement the specification
without regard for any licensing restrictions, is this included?


Best,

Clark