Patent clauses in software licences

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This article documents a non-solution or a dud.
For information of the danger of supporting these, see duds and non-solutions. For a list, see Category:Non-solutions.

Some software licences contain clauses which place requirements on patent holders who participate in distributing that software. These can be useful, but only in some narrow cases.

Contents

[edit] Limits to effectiveness

  1. These clauses only apply to patent holders who distribute the software which uses this licence.
  2. The stronger the clause, the less likely it is that dangerous patent holders will distribute software that uses the licence.

[edit] GNU GPL v2

See section 6 and section 7.

Dan Ravicher argues that GPLv2 includes an implicit patent grant.[1][2]

[edit] GNU GPL v3

Section 10:

"you may not impose a license fee, royalty, or other charge for exercise of rights granted under this License, and you may not initiate litigation (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any patent claim is infringed by making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing the Program or any portion of it."

Also, section 12, which is very similar to GPLv2's section 7.

[edit] Related discussions

[edit] LGPL 2.1

[edit] Apache License

Section 3:

"If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed."

[edit] Mozilla Public License

Section 8:

(excerpt) "...if You initiate litigation by asserting a patent infringement claim (excluding declatory judgment actions) against Initial Developer or a Contributor (the Initial Developer or Contributor against whom You file such action is referred to as "Participant") alleging that..."

[edit] Related pages on en.swpat.org

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ↑ http://ipmall.info/hosted_resources/sipla/sipla_2005/ravicher_slides.pdf
  2. ↑ https://www.fsf.org/licensing/seminar-materials/2005nyc/implied-patent-grant-slides.pdf


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