Patent grant no good

Patent grant no good

Posted May 27, 2005 15:35 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
In reply to: Patent grant no good by mjr
Parent article: A toy and a promise from Nokia

There is no implied patent license. I've seen the FSF's explanation of the patent ramifications of GPL, and it consists mainly of Section 0. But Section 0 is a scope clause. It says what things the license (along with its conditions) does and doesn't restrict. One thing it doesn't restrict is how you can use the program. That's a far cry from affirmatively giving you the right to use the program unrestricted. The clause is, "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope. The act of running the Program is not restricted, ..."

FSF also has a complicated explanation of how a not-freely-licensed patent might conflict with GPL by requiring the licensee to place restrictions on modifying the program. I agree that a patent license might conflict with the GPL. But others do not, and no license at all definitely does not.

For the sake of the next argument, lets imagine that there's another section in GPL that says, "I permit you to use the program in any way you please."

That still wouldn't effect an implied patent license from redistributors. Nokia could (in various ways) nullify that clause in its redistribution. The only effect would be that Nokia would be redistributing without a license, and that means Nokia would owe damages, including royalties, to the copyright owners. That's not the same thing as the recipient of the code from Nokia having a legal right to use Nokia's patents. The recipient still owes Nokia for patent infringement.

---

(Log in to post comments)