On Tue, 2004-07-27 at 02:29, Matthew Garrett wrote: > Rob Lanphier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > In broad strokes, what we're trying to accomplish with the patent clause > > is this: we're giving a license to our patents (and our copyright) in > > exchange for not being sued by the licensee over patent infringment. > > Note that this isn't a license to the licensee's patents. This just > > basically says that we can revoke our patent grants if the licensee > > chooses to take legal action against us. > > If it did that, I don't think there'd be any real argument. Sadly, it > terminates the copyright license as well. If it merely terminated the > patent license I don't think we'd have any trouble with it. It would > also strengthen your legal case (if the copyright termination would make > any difference to them, then they must be using the software. If they no > longer have a patent license to do so, you can nail them for rather more > breaches than you previously could) if somebody does sue you over > patents.
I've never personally been involved in patent litigation, but I doubt it's ever that clean. Once in court, both sides will want/need every tool at their disposal, since every aspect of the opponents case will be under attack. Our case would /not/ be stronger by freely ceding the copyright aspects of our intellectual property to the opponent. > In its current form, I think there'd be few people who would accept the > RPSL as DFSG-free. If you terminated patent grants rather than the > copyright license, I think there'd be a sizable proportion of developers > who would accept it as DFSG-free. Let me get this straight. The freedom that you are trying to protect is the freedom to drag an ecosystem contributor into court and sue them? Rob -- Rob Lanphier, Development Support Manager - RealNetworks Helix Community: http://helixcommunity.org Development Support: http://www.realnetworks.com/products/support/devsupport
