Re: RE-PROPOSED: The Dictator Test

[Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>]

Florian Weimer wrote:

> The main idea behind some patent clauses is to make the copyright
> license conditional on some behavior with respect to patents.
Such as not claiming in a lawsuit that the work infringes a patent?  :-)

Well, in that case, there are two possibilities:
(1) The work doesn't infringe the patent.  In this case, you have no right
to claim that it does.  So it passes the Dictator test.
(2) The work does infringe the patent.  In this case, the copyright license
is nearly useless and grants no meaningful rights to anyone but the patent
holder.  So it's a non-free license, and we don't have to worry about the
Dictator test.

So I think such a clause passes the test.  (There are probably some details
I've missed, but anyway.)

I also think any broader clause than that is *not* reasonable and deserves
to fail the test.

> Such 
> clauses can be quite reasonable, but they would fail the proposed
> test.

-- 
There are none so blind as those who will not see.