Re: Patent clauses in licenses

[Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org>]

On Mon, Sep 20, 2004 at 03:02:49PM +0100, MJ Ray wrote:
> It is bad patent law which favours patent owners. It is fine to use 
> copyright licences to "correct" copyright law, but using copyright 
> licences to "correct" non-copyright law - be it patent law, gun 
> control law or nuclear technology laws - is not.

Why?  What freedoms does this protect?  Why should copyright not be used
to protect free software from patent abuse, just as it's used to protect
against "software hoarding"?

I agree with what you say as a rule of thumb, just as "licenses which
attempt to go beyond copyright law are probably also non-free" is a
useful rule of thumb, but like all rules of thumb, we should be able
to get to the root of the issue--why the rule of thumb is correct in
each instance.  So far, I don't see it here.

-- 
Glenn Maynard