[copyleft-next] copyleft-next patent commons?

Gervase Markham gerv at mozilla.org
Fri Feb 22 16:50:54 UTC 2013


Again, forgive me if this has been discussed before...

Has the group considered the pros and cons of changing section 10), para
b), to cover all copyleft-nexted works? So:

10. Termination

    Your license grants under section 1 are automatically terminated if
    You
...
    b) initiate a patent infringement litigation claim (excluding
       declaratory judgment actions, counterclaims, and cross-claims)
       alleging that any work under this License directly or indirectly
       infringes any patent.

In other words, if you sue someone over a patent in a copyleft-nexted
work, you lose rights to use all copyleft-nexted works. As
copyleft-nexted works become more common and more useful (say e.g. a
copyleft-nexted work was incorporated into Android) it would become more
and more of a bad idea to sue anyone for patent infringement relating to
such work. After all, in that case, the first thing you'd have to do is
replace all the company Android phones with iPhones...

The potential disadvantage of this, presumably, is the risk that
organizations will be less interested in writing or using
copyleft-nexted works.

Gerv


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