LAB Public License proposal

[Mahesh T. Pai]

DJ Anubis said on Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 08:58:30AM +0100,:

 > French law  is somewhat complex, as decisions  come over decisions,
 > and we have to comply with some judicial labyrinth whenever we have
 > to write down  some contractual documents. Licensing is  one of the
 > most complex of them.

Hmm. Same situation pervails in the Common Law tradition too. You will
be interested  to know  that in  law school, we  were taught  that the
Civil Law  tradition (and France  was almost always the  example) does
not  rely  much on  what  the  Common  law tradition  calls  `judicial
precedent';  `precedent'  is legalese  for  earlier  decisions by  the
judiciary.
 
 > A confusing  L.131-3 from  French Intellectual Property  act tells:
 > "transmission of  author's rights is subornidated  to the condition
 > that each and every transmited right be distinctly mentioned in the
 > session act  and thet exploitation domain of  each transmited right
 > be delimited for its destination, place and duration."

Is  this  the  official  translation??   (Will the  French  ever  have
`official' translations of their laws?? *g*)

Does  this translate  mean  `granted rights  have  to be  specifically
enumerated; and the  granted rights may be used  only for the purpose,
time and place for which the grant is made'??

If  not,  can  you  please   explain  the  phrase  `session  act'  and
`delimited for its destination, place and duration'?

 > According to this text, GNU GPL is silent about this question. As a
 > result a court  can invalid this license and  licensee will have on
 > programs actions not legal in such a case.

Do the  French have a doctrine  of estoppel??  Is it  possible for the
French licensee to rely on the  statements in the license as a promise
made by the  owner of copyright?? Or is that  all promises relating to

(a) enforcement of a right (b) permissions in a copyright work

should invariably conform to  the Intellectual Property Act you quoted
above?? 

Licensee can  rely on law  of estoppel if  the Copyright Law  does not
expressly exclude operation of estoppel.

 > A  court decision,  while not  dealing strictly  with free  or open
 > source software, hits the real problem. A french court decided that

I guess that this will still apply to F/L/OSS.
 
 > The same  could be  applied if a  French author, living  in France,
 > decided  that applicable  law  would be  Californian courts,  which
 > would be considered illegal by law.

Will the whole contract / license be invalidated?? Or will the court
just ignore only the provisions relating to choice of law??

Here  (in  India),  choice  of  law  provisions are  read  in  a  very
restricted way.  If the facts  of the case  do not, in any  way confer
jurisdiction on  the courts  at the place  mentioned in  the contract,
the court  will simply ignore  those provisions relating to  choice of
law.  OTOH, if  courts at  both place  X and  Y had  jurisdiction, and
parties  decided that  proceedings  will  be brought  only  at X,  the
courts will enforce that.

 > Most licenses  come from  USA entities, without  this international
 > legal intricacies. This  is why we used CUA model  as draft for our
 > work.

Why do you need a choice of  law clause in the first place?? (sorry if
you have already answered this - I have not followed this thread toooo
closely).
 

-- 
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
                                          
  Mahesh T. Pai, LL.M.,                   
  'NANDINI', S. R. M. Road,               
  Ernakulam, Cochin-682018,               
  Kerala, India.                          
                                          
  http://paivakil.port5.com         
                                          
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~+
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