The Copyright Act preempts the GPL

[Peterson, Scott K (HP Legal)]

Unfortunately, I don't understand your comment.
"if the court agrees" - Agrees with what?

-- Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: Rod Dixon [mailto:rodd at cyberspaces.org] 
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2004 3:07 PM
To: Peterson, Scott K (HP Legal)
Cc: license-discuss at opensource.org
Subject: RE: The Copyright Act preempts the GPL


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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