On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 10:07:59AM +0100, MJ Ray wrote: > "We insist that licenses be perpetual unless terminated for > non-compliance" Branden Robinson during the LaTeX discussions > http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/08/msg00108.html -- Now, the > IBM patent licence terminates if you don't comply with conditions on > other software. Why is that not contaminating?
That's an example of terminating for non-compliance. An example of termination without non-compliance would be where a license is terminated after five years. Branden's statement isn't particularly restrictive. > I don't think that accepting non-free patent licenses is a useful way > to defend free software. Then why would suing IBM over patent license violations matter for free software? > > Legalistic licensors covering all their bases, or companies that hold > > so many patents that it would be difficult to search them all to > > determine what to license. > > It seems unfair to put the burden of discovering what has been > licensed on the distributors and users. Does anyone know how a court > would handle this? In the U.S., it's roughly the case that the defendant in patent litigation is presumed guilty until proven innocent. -- Raul
