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<body><div dir="ltr"><div><div>Prashant Shah wrote:<br></div>
<div>> CC0 explicitly states that it doesn't grant patent rights if there are any. Is<br></div>
<div>> this not going against the purpose of putting the work in public domain itself?<br></div>
<div> </div>
<div>The rationale, as I understand, is that a group in a University or other large <br></div>
<div>organization would like to make their work publicly available, but don't wish<br></div>
<div>to have the expense of clearing it with the intellectual property department.<br></div>
<div>In other words, they explicitly wish to reserve patent rights and don't want the <br></div>
<div>public domain dedication to interfere with their ability to collect licensing.<br></div>
<div> </div>
<div>The FSF considers works released under CC0 to be "Free Software" [1], <br></div>
<div>but, the rationale for this determination was never disclosed. Perhaps <br></div>
<div>because anyone could sue for patent infringement regardless of copyright?<br></div>
<div> </div>
<div>The OSI couldn't come to an agreement on the fallback license, since it<br></div>
<div>explicitly withheld patent rights [2].<br></div>
<div> <br></div>
<div>Clark<br></div>
<div>[1] <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0">http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0</a><br></div>
<div>[2] <a href="http://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero">http://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero</a><br></div>
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