Patent grant -- Am I reading it right? [LWN.net]

Patent grant -- Am I reading it right?

Posted Jan 16, 2006 20:45 UTC (Mon) by Ross (subscriber, #4065)
Parent article: GPLv3: a first look

I'm looking at the "all versions of the covered work" commetary above. If I read that correctly, when a product under GPL is distributed by a company, and that product is later modified by another party so to use some patented method or structure, the original company now (kind of retroactively) grants a license if they have a patent on that method or structure in the modified product, not just for the technologies contained in the original.

While I don't have a big problem with this (because I don't like software patents), I could see this as being a major problem for tech companies adopting the new version of the GPL because basically any of their software patents can be freely licensed if that software is modified to use that technology.

(Log in to post comments)

Patent grant -- Am I reading it right?

Posted Jan 16, 2006 20:49 UTC (Mon) by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330) [Link]

I believe that you are reading it wrong. Reading it as you do would allow anyone to gain access to any patent, if the patent holder ever distributed any GPLv3 work: just modify that work to add an implementation of the patent. Only the work as it was when distributed is covered.