Defensive Patent License

What this article documents is not a solution.
For information of the risks of putting too much work into these, see duds and non-solutions. See also: Abolition is the only solution.

The Defensive Patent License (DPL) is a project being worked on by Jason Schultz and Jennifer Urban, two law professors at UC Berkeley. It was first publicly discussed at a conference on May 7^th 2010. Despite the name, it proposes a membership organisation, not a licence.

Overview

None of the details are finalised, but points being discussed include:

1. Member companies would have to commit all their patents. Not just a chosen set, not just the patents of one department/affiliate of the company. (This aspect is still the subject of a lot of discussion)
2. Members give all other members an irrevocable licence to freely use their patents.
3. Members can leave, but this would not cancel the licences already granted during their membership.

Related pages on en.swpat.org

• Defensive patent pools

External links

• LWN.net article, discusses the DPL from the 9th paragraph onward, 30 Apr 2010
• The Defensive Patent License makes patents less evil for open source, 7 May 2010
• By Florian Mueller:
  • Will the Defensive Patent License be able to make patents 'less evil' for Free and Open Source Software?, 17 May 2010
  • The DPL and the 'Fair Troll' business model: make money fighting patents with patents, 21 May 2010

References

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