Proposed new OSD item - patent termination

[Matthew Garrett]

On Sat, 2005-04-09 at 07:12 -0700, Bruce Perens wrote:

> It seems reasonable, though, even in the case of copyright grants that 
> terminate upon a patent lawsuit. Who wants to make free grants to folks 
> who are suing them?

You're saying that if Apple infringe my hypothetical patent on internal
case airflow (developed after years of painstaking research in
windtunnels), it's reasonable for me to lose the right to use their open
source software if I sue them over it? I disagree. Open source requires
copyright holders to make some sacrifices.

If I build a business on top of a piece of software under a license like
the APSL, it effectively gives the copyright holder carte blanche to
violate as many of my patents as they want. This isn't anything even
vaguely approaching an equal transfer of rights.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59 at srcf.ucam.org