[License-review] For approval: The Cryptographic Autonomy License (Beta 4)

VanL van.lindberg at gmail.com
Fri Dec 6 21:34:47 UTC 2019


Hi Nigel,

For example, GPLv3: "A contributor's “essential patent claims” are all
patent claims owned or controlled by the contributor, whether already
acquired or hereafter acquired, that would be infringed by some manner,
permitted by this License, of making, using, or selling its contributor
version, *but do not include claims that would be infringed only as a
consequence of further modification of the contributor version*."

Thanks,
Van




On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 3:29 PM Nigel T <nigel.2048 at gmail.com> wrote:

> It reads differently than other patent grants in other licenses.  Can
> someone point out the same carveout in Apache or GPL?
>
> On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 12:25 PM Pamela Chestek <pamela at chesteklegal.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 12/6/2019 12:13 PM, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> > On 12/6/19 7:48 AM, VanL wrote:
>> >> On Fri, Dec 6, 2019 at 8:52 AM Nigel T <nigel.2048 at gmail.com
>> >> <mailto:nigel.2048 at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>     3.2.a seems to imply to me that there is no patent grant when the
>> >>     work is used as part of a combination or modification.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> This is known as a combination carveout. Patent claims are covered for
>> >> what is provided to you. If you modify the software in some way so that
>> >> it infringes a patent *solely because of your modification or
>> >> combination*, then your actions are not specifically licensed.
>> >>
>> >> The rationale is clear: The licensor is only responsible for what they
>> >> provide to other people, not those peoples' subsequent actions.
>> >> Otherwise someone could include a single line from someone's software
>> >> ("#include <stdio.h>") and claim that all the patents owned by that
>> >> person were licensed.
>> >>
>> > Yeah, we discussed this topic with the proposed Oracle downstream
>> > license too.  It's an inevitable consequence of OSS license patent
>> > grants; a patent grant cannot include carte blanche grants to any patent
>> > affecting the software regardless of modifications, and no existing
>> > license does.  So Van is 100% correct here.
>> >
>> I believe this is true of every patent grant in every open source license.
>>
>> Pam
>>
>> Pamela S. Chestek
>> Chestek Legal
>> PO Box 2492
>> Raleigh, NC 27602
>> 919-800-8033
>> pamela at chesteklegal.com
>> www.chesteklegal.com
>>
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