On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 12:40 AM, Richard Fontana
<fontana(a)sharpeleven.org>wrote:
On Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 01:35:44PM +0000, Gervase Markham wrote:
> Some licensing documents disclaim e.g. the application of the United
> Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. Do
> they have good reason to do so,
I don't actually know. I confess that as far as I can recall I've
never looked at that Convention. The most coherent argument I have
heard from a lawyer on this point was something to the following
effect: 'no one really knows what's in that Convention, or whether it
applies to software, but whatever is in it might be bad' (paraphrasing
heavily of course). I think the main reason we see this being excluded
is because someone initially decided to do so and this started a
process in which lawyers drafting licensing agreements all followed
suit.
FWIW, that's my understanding too. But we may have gotten our
understanding from the same person. :-)
> * "or "powered by" statements"
>
> Is this too specific, or are we hoping a judge would understand this as
> referring to a class of statements? E.g. if there was a "FooBar Inside"
> statement instead of "Powered by FooBar"...
This is just a clarification of what kinds of things absolutely are
not 'Legal Notices'. It isn't meant to be exhaustive, but I did
recently add 'Powered by statements' because that is such a common
form in which I've seen the problematic condition.
When Gerv raised this, I wondered why the word "trademarks" isn't in there.
When I suggested adding "trademark legends" I'm SURE I had a good reason
not to add "trademarks," but for the life of me I can't figure it out now.
Maybe I was thinking about the case where a name is also a trademark, so in
the copyright notice the company name would also be trademark? But that
seems a silly thing to worry might get misinterpreted.
So if no one else can think of a good reason not to say "trademark,"
doesn't it make sense to say "but does not include logos, other graphical
images, _trademarks or_ trademark legends[, or "powered by" statements]."
That will take care of all the "powered by," "built on,"
"inside"
statements.
Pam