On Sat, Nov 15, 2003 at 12:58:39AM +0000, Henning Makholm wrote: > > In the current patent-litigation context, a large stable of patents to > > cross-license is considered a vitally important corporate defense > > strategy. > > Yes, but a patent could not be part of such a portfolio if if were > licensed freely to the general public.
... unless it's licensed with a condition that if you sue them, the patent grant is withdrawn. That seems to be the purpose of the reciprocity clause. It seems the intent is to require a patent license (under 4b), while still allowing those patents to be used defensively (against other patents). At least on its face, it seems like a useful compromise: companies often legitimately won't want to give out unrecovable patent licenses, since they need them to defend against other, hostile patent holders. Still undecided. I can sympathise both with attempts to find defenses against patents (of which free software has scarce few), and to do so in a way that doesn't force others to weaken their own patent defenses. -- Glenn Maynard
