Proposed new OSD item - patent termination

[Bruce Perens]

Matthew Garrett wrote:

>BSD is an obvious example of one that doesn't do anything related to patents
>
There is an implicit patent grant in the BSD license. If you distribute 
software embodying your own patents with a license to make use of the 
software, you are effectively granting an estoppel regarding those 
patents. I suppose the estoppel might be limited to the practice of the 
patents as it is carried out in the software that you distributed, but 
given that you are also granting a license to modify the software, 
that's less clear.

>Effectively, terminating a patent license just turns the license into one that didn't grant you a patent in the first place.
>  
>
In some cases, the copyright license, not just the patent grant, should 
terminate upon a software patent suit.

In his presentation on GPL 3 at the OSDL conference, Eben Moglen 
suggested that a better defense against software patents would be a goal 
of GPL 3. I would imagine this might take the form of a blanket 
termination of all GPL 3 software in response to a software patent 
lawsuit regarding GPL 3 software.

    Thanks

    Bruce