Proposed new OSD item - patent termination

Arnoud Engelfriet galactus at stack.nl
Sat Apr 9 12:36:14 UTC 2005


Matthew Garrett wrote:
> No copyright license termination on unrelated patent action
> 
> The copyright license must not terminate if patent action unrelated to
> the licensed software is initiated against the licensor.

The more common situation I think is that the whole license terminates
if you sue a contributor for patent infringement regarding
the licensed software. Perhaps it would be wise to say something
about that explicitly.

Examples are the OSL and the Mozilla Public License. The latter
also terminates the patent license if you sue over "any
[other] software, hardware, or device". What about that?

Arnoud

-- 
Arnoud Engelfriet, Dutch patent attorney - Speaking only for myself
Patents, copyright and IPR explained for techies: http://www.iusmentis.com/



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