Re: Patent clauses in licenses
On Tue, Sep 21, 2004 at 05:02:14PM -0400, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> > There is no such thing, "software patents" is misleading. We are
> > concerned with patents that can be infringed by software, not patents
> > on software. A lot of the patents that affect Debian in practice are
> > not software patents, as software implementations became feasible only
> > long after the patent was filed.
>
> Call them "patents on mathematical algorithms" if you like. Traditionally
> they were not patentable.
>
> > This makes the situation even more complicated because a license
> > cannot distinguish between "software patents" (evil) and "non-software
> > patents" (perhaps less evil, but I'm not sure).
> I'm not so sure you can't distiguish.
>
> The existing licenses mostly use the horrible phrase "patents applicable to
> software", which certainly does not distinguish.
OSL 2.1:
This License shall terminate automatically and You may no longer
exercise any of the rights granted to You by this License as of the
date You commence an action, including a cross-claim or counterclaim,
against Licensor or any licensee alleging that the Original Work
infringes a patent. This termination provision shall not apply for an
action alleging patent infringement by combinations of the Original
Work with other software or hardware.
In this implementation, there's no need to distinguish; if the patent can
possibly apply to the work, it's clearly a "software patent" or a
"patents on mathematical algorithms" or a "patent that can be infringed
by software" (or whatever).
The need to distinguish seems to only apply to those licenses that say
"if you sue me for software patents at all, you lose the license to this
software", which I believe we agree is non-free anyway.
--
Glenn Maynard
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