ECL 2.0 and New Questions!

[David Woolley]

Chris Travers wrote:
>> to use it for open source software if there were any doubt that the
>> organisation had the right to grant the licence.
> 
> I would ask what licenses avoid these issues.  I.e. if an organization
> does not have the right to grant the patent, wouldn't that invalidate
> the patent license anyway?  IANAL, and I could be missing something.

I'm not sure you understand the complexity of the situation here.  The 
licensor of the software has the right to obtain a patent and then grant 
patent licences but that right is constrained by a contract, such that 
they don't have the right to grant royalty free or even RAND licences 
for the software.

Moreover, at the time they issue the software licence, they don't know 
that the invention is actually subject to the contract, at best because 
the team that is working on the project subject to the contract has not 
told the licensing department that they have also made the same 
invention, or, if US patent law allows this scenario, because that team 
realises, after the software is released, that they can use the 
invention in the software in their project, and as it is invented by the 
same organisation, slap a patent on it and then exclusively licence it 
to their client, within the one year grace period.

The problem is associated with granting the specific licence, not with 
granting some licence.

> Even the GPL v3 only applies exceptions to this in the case of
> distribution relying on a third party explicit patent license (implied

This is not a third party patent.  It is a patent that is, 
retrospectively, granted to the licensor of the software.


-- 
David Woolley
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