[copyleft-next] copyleft-next patent commons?

Pamela Chestek pchestek at gmail.com
Fri Feb 22 22:47:14 UTC 2013


On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 4:51 PM, Ben Cotton <bcotton at funnelfiasco.com>wrote:

> On Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Pamela Chestek <pchestek at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >  So how about instead of "initiate" is it "allege or threaten"?
>
> That strikes me as being somewhat vague.


And that's a bad thing because ...?

The threat of an event occurring has a much more significant long-term
impact on business-decisionmaking than the event actually occurring. The
attorney's role is to prevent lawsuits, so you accomplish much more by just
making them nervous about the possibility, and the more uncertain the
possibility is the more conservative they will be. So here it's ambiguity
in favor of the open source licensor, which I think is a good thing.


> Perhaps there's already
> precedent for this kind of wording, but it seems like this would add
> the need for more litigation. Initiating the suit seems like a pretty
> clear-cut action, whereas allege or threaten is open to
> interpretation. (see also: "it's not a threat, it's a promise").
>


There is a legal standard for the degree of threat that allows one to file
a declaratory judgment claim (it's relatively easy to meet) which is the
degree I'm thinking of here, although I don't think it's reducible to a
reasonable number of words for this purpose.

>
> I agree with the principle, but I'm not sure how it could be worded. I
> suppose "allege or threaten" may be enough of a scare tactic to
> prevent suits than a provision actually intended to be enforced?
>

The intent is not just to stop suits but even stop any suggestion of
infringement. So any communication at all, public or private (including a
press release) that mentions both a patent and a product I would consider
at least an allegation of infringement (I briefly debated whether
"threaten" was even needed--I don't know if it's possible for a "threat" to
not also be an "allegation" but decided "threaten" allows for consideration
of intent). I would want a company to think really hard about saying
something like "we're looking at Foo in light of our patent portfolio"
because their intent is to create uncertainty and therefore prevent
adoption. I want there to be a strong disincentive for making the
statement.


Pam


>
> --
> Ben Cotton
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