The Copyright Act preempts the GPL

[Rod Dixon]

I must be missing something from your argument. It sounds like you are
describing copyright infringement. If so, the impediment can be removed if
the court agrees.

Rod


On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Peterson, Scott K (HP Legal) wrote:

> If, when impeded in some way from undertaking one of the actions
> exclusive to the copyright holder, a copyright holder could go to court
> and use the copyright rights to overcome the impediment - that would be
> an exercise of an affirmative right.
>
> As I am not aware of an example of a copyright holder exercising a right
> in such a way, I continue to find it most helpful to think of copyright
> as a negative right.
>
> -- Scott
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tony Stanco [mailto:Tony at egovos.org]
> Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2004 8:07 AM
> To: lrosen at rosenlaw.com; Peterson, Scott K (HP Legal); 'John Cowan'
> Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
> Subject: Re: The Copyright Act preempts the GPL
>
>
> Scott,
>
> my understanding is the same as Larry's. Copyright provides exclusive
> plenary rights to the owner. Patents provide the owner only with the
> right to exclude others. I think the distinction was grounded in the
> fact that it would be hard to conflict with someone else's copyright in
> an original work (which usually stood alone), while complex,
> interrelated processes/machines could easily involve multiple and
> conflicting patents. As a result, patents are only negative rights and a
> person's exploitation of a particular patent in subject to the non
> existence of conflicting patent(s).
>
> Best regards,
> Tony
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lawrence E. Rosen" <lrosen at rosenlaw.com>
> To: "'Peterson, Scott K (HP Legal)'" <scott.k.peterson at hp.com>; "'John
> Cowan'" <cowan at ccil.org>
> Cc: <license-discuss at opensource.org>
> Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 8:39 PM
> Subject: RE: The Copyright Act preempts the GPL
>
>
> > Scott Peterson wrote:
> > > The rights provided under US copyright law are negative rights (the
> > > right to exclude others), not positive rights (the right to do
> > > something yourself).
> >
> > I don't think so, Scott. At least that's not how the copyright act
> > reads:
> >
> >     "...The owner of copyright under this title has the
> >     exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the
> >     following...."
> >
> > The patent law is exactly the opposite.
> >
> >    "...Every patent shall contain ... a grant to the patentee ...
> >    to exclude others from using or selling...."
> >
> > /Larry Rosen
> >
> > --
> > license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
>
> --
> license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
>
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