[License-review] For Approval: OpenMDW License Agreement, versions 1.1 (OpenMDW-1.1)

[横井雄太]

I have a question about the limiting principle of the litigation
termination provision in OpenMDW-1.1.

As clarified in this thread, OpenMDW-1.1 grants rights covering copyright,
patent, trade secret, and database rights, while the termination provision
is triggered only by litigation asserting that the Model Materials directly
or indirectly infringe a patent or copyright.

That creates an apparent asymmetry between the scope of the grant and the
scope of the termination trigger, and I would like to understand whether
that asymmetry is deliberate.

For example, suppose a licensee brings a claim concerning the same Model
Materials, but the claim is:

   - infringement of a database right; or
   - misappropriation of a trade secret.

My reading of the current text is that neither claim would trigger
termination, because the trigger expressly identifies only patent and
copyright infringement.

If that reading is correct, what principle explains the boundary between
patent and copyright claims, which trigger termination, and database-right
or trade-secret claims, which apparently do not?

I think this distinction may be relevant to the broader question raised in
this thread about the proper scope of litigation-triggered termination. In
particular, if OpenMDW intentionally grants several categories of rights
while limiting retaliation to only two of them, the reason for that
boundary may help identify a principled stopping point rather than treating
recognition of a copyright trigger as necessarily implying recognition of
triggers for every other type of claim involving the licensed materials.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that the termination provision should be
expanded. I am asking how the present boundary should be understood.

Could the steward therefore confirm:

   1. whether a database-right infringement claim concerning the Model
   Materials would leave the OpenMDW grants intact;
   2. whether a trade-secret misappropriation claim concerning the Model
   Materials would likewise leave the grants intact; and
   3. what principle explains the different treatment of those claims from
   patent and copyright infringement claims?

Clarifying that boundary would, I think, be useful to the broader review of
what kinds of litigation may appropriately trigger termination of rights
under an open-source license.
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