Free licenses and warranties [LWN.net]

Free licenses and warranties

Posted May 9, 2003 0:41 UTC (Fri) by sethml (guest, #8471)
Parent article: Free licenses and warranties

The article excerpts from the Creative Commens license warranty sections:

By offering the Work for public release under this License, Licensor represents and warrants that, to the best of Licensor's knowledge after reasonable inquiry:

Licensor has secured all rights in the Work necessary to grant the license rights hereunder and to permit the lawful exercise of the rights granted hereunder without You having any obligation to pay any royalties, compulsory license fees, residuals or any other payments;
...

Suppose I release some code under this license, and a patent holder subsequently decides that use of my code violates their patent. Then does the warranty entitle the users of the code to sue me for the patent licensing fee? If so, this seems rather problematic, since "reasonable inquiry" into software patents is a very difficult thing to do, especially if the patent is granted after the software is written. Any license mavens care to comment?

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Free licenses and warranties

Posted May 9, 2003 23:25 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (guest, #1954) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, you're right. I am incredulous that this license contract (and others alluded to in the article) have such a ridiculous warranty. Considering that the licensor is probably getting next to nothing in exchange for the license, this is an outrageous amount of warranty to give.

A sane license contract would contain a warranty that the licensor knows of no patents, copyrights, etc., but not that they don't exist.

Free licenses and warranties

Posted May 12, 2003 18:39 UTC (Mon) by donstuart (guest, #4550) [Link] (1 responses)

To my non-lawyer eyes, that is exactly what the license says. Doesn't the phrase "to the best of Licensor's knowledge after reasonable inquiry" mean that a plaintif would have to prove that the Licensor either knew of a problem or did not make "reasonable inquiry"? Granted that "reasonable" is one of those words that make lawyers rich, this is still not a very strong statement.

Free licenses and warranties

Posted May 15, 2003 23:38 UTC (Thu) by eread (guest, #1918) [Link]

The problem that I see (my eyes are a little lawyer-ish - IANAL) is the "best of the Licensor's knowledge after reasonable inquiry" would make an potential argumentative point and drag people through litigation.

I think you sum it up with: "Granted that "reasonable" is one of those words that make lawyers rich". Why leave the hole open? Why risk that an inferior-court judge is going to rest his decision on that point? Then appeals happen etc etc etc. In cases I have read, stranger things have happened (albeit famous cases of judicial ineptitude ;)