Automatic GPL termination

[Philippe Verdy]

Alexander Terekhov [mailto:alexander.terekhov at gmail.com] wrote:
> On 9/13/07, Philippe Verdy <verdy_p at wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> [...]
> > This is US or Canadian interpretation. Remember that CeCILL is based on
> French
> > law (currently the DADVSI which namely covers all "intellectual
> properties", even if
> > Richard Stallman insists that this is a propaganda term used by
> Microsoft, this
> > terminology is present in the French legislation).
> 
> Not only in the French legislation. :-)
> 
> Intellectual Property Agency of Sunny Armenia kindly let visitors know
> the following about Armenian Civil Code:
> 
> http://www.aipa.am/en/legislation/37/
> 
> ------
> Civil Code (Section10)
> 
> Section 10 - Intellectual Property
> Chapter 62 - General Provisions
> Chapter 63 - Copyright
> Chapter 64 - Neighboring Rights
> Chapter 65 - Right to an Invention, Utility Model, or Industrial Design
> Chapter 66 - Rights to New Varieties of Plants and New Breeds of Animals
> Chapter 67 - Right to the Topology of Integrated Microcircuits
> Chapter 68 - Right to Protection of Undisclosed Information From Illegal
> Use
> Chapter 69 - Means of Individualization of Participants in Civil
> Commerce, of Goods, and of Services
> 
> Chapter 62: General Provisions
> 
> [...]

It's interesting to see that Armenia adopted a civil code modeled under the
French civil code that was adopted in many European countries or kept even
after their independence from France. But may be Russia has a civil code
structured like in France, rather than like in Common Law in Britain, US and
Canada.

Anyway, those legal systems are converging due to many international
treaties, including the ratification of membership to WIPO and WCO, two
organizations that have strong influence in the way licences, copyrights,
patents and authors rights are protected internationally. So even if there
remains differences of interpretations, they are converging and rights
recognized in one country are recognized in others through equivalences
established by national legislation offering at least the same level of
protection.

The Richard Stallman against "intellectual property" is already lost. Even
GPLv3" references directly a provision made in the WIPO treaty, meaning that
the FSF already recognizes the intellectual property (otherwise, some of the
new restrictions added in GPLv3 would not be enforceable, such as those
regarding technical measures against counterfeighting; removing this
addition would mean that the FSF could not battle against DRM systems used
to restricts artificially the GPL rights normally attached to systems using
embedded GPL code, like a Linux kernel within media decoders).