To patent owners who support open source software:
In the UK patent decision I recently sent you, the court wrote the following about "essential claims" that are licensed under "fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms (e.g., FRAND): A member of ETSI is obliged to use its reasonable endeavours to inform ETSI in a timely manner of Essential IPRs during the development of a standard or technical specification. If a member submits a technical proposal for a standard or technical specification it is obliged to inform ETSI of its IPRs which might be essential (clause 4.1). The Open Web Foundation instead proposed an alternative to this definition of "essential claims". In Open Web Foundation Agreement 1.0 <http://www.openwebfoundation.org/legal/the-owf-1-0-agreements/owfa-1-0> , it defines two alternative terms, and dictates that such "Granted Claims" are "Permitted" (are irrevocably licensed) for all implementations of the standard, including open source software: 3.1.1. The Promise. I, on behalf of myself and my successors in interest and assigns, irrevocably promise not to assert my Granted Claims against you for your Permitted Uses, subject to the terms and conditions of Section 3.1. Section 3.1 of OWFa 1.0 promises a fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory license (e.g., more equitable than FRAND) for all implementers of that standard - with patent reciprocation similar to copyleft as its tradeoff benefit. This is preferable to essential claims promises and it avoids all the complex and expensive litigation exemplified by the UK matter. 8.4. Granted Claims. "Granted Claims" are those patent claims that I own or control, including those patent claims I acquire or control after the Date below, that are infringed by Permitted Uses. Granted Claims include only those patent claims that are infringed by the implementation of any portions of the Specification where the Specification describes the functionality causing the infringement in detail and does not merely reference the functionality causing the infringement. 8.6. Permitted Uses. "Permitted Uses" means making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation of the Specification 1) only to the extent it implements the Specification and 2) so long as all required portions of the Specification are implemented. Permitted Uses do not extend to any portion of an implementation that is not included in the Specification. If you have patents, please consider licensing them using OWFa 1.0 instead of a burdensome and largely useless essential claims license such as the one that the UK court took 59 pages to litigate. /Larry Lawrence Rosen 707-478-8932 3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482 lro...@rosenlaw.com <mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com> LinkedIn: Lawrence Rosen
_______________________________________________ The opinions expressed in this email are those of the sender and not necessarily those of the Open Source Initiative. Official statements by the Open Source Initiative will be sent from an opensource.org email address. License-discuss mailing list License-discuss@lists.opensource.org http://lists.opensource.org/mailman/listinfo/license-discuss_lists.opensource.org
