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<!-- BlackBerry Work Editable Body Start -->Oooops :). Ignore the empty email.<br>
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<div>Why does who holds the patent matter in this case? If a patent exists and you don't have a patent grant actually precludes distribution of code it would apply regardless of who owns it right?</div>
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<div>If the existence of a patent doesn't preclude distribution then it doesn't violate the OSD.</div>
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<div>So a patent grant by the contributor only protects in a very small fraction of cases. It doesn't even protect against bad actors intending to submarine patents because they could simply sell those patents to a separate legal entity that acts as a patent
troll before they do a FOSS release.</div>
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<div><b>From: </b><span>Christopher Sean Morrison <<a href="mailto:brlcad@mac.com">brlcad@mac.com</a>></span></div>
<div><b>Date: </b><span>Tuesday, Mar 07, 2017, 5:57 PM</span></div>
<div><b>To: </b><span>license-discuss@opensource.org <<a href="mailto:license-discuss@opensource.org">license-discuss@opensource.org</a>></span></div>
<div><b>Subject: </b><span>Re: [License-discuss] [Non-DoD Source] patent rights and the OSD</span></div>
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<div><span>By my reading, those "distribution terms" violate OSD #1 and #7. This is potentially a problem for any license (e.g., all the permissives) that doesn't specifically speak to patent rights. If the distribution terms specifically deny a patent grant,
it will no longer be possible to freely redistribute the source code (that is, IF any contributor holds patent rights whose claims are implemented by the source code...).</span></div>
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