If, when impeded in some way from undertaking one of the actions exclusive to the copyright holder, a copyright holder could go to court and use the copyright rights to overcome the impediment - that would be an exercise of an affirmative right.
As I am not aware of an example of a copyright holder exercising a right in such a way, I continue to find it most helpful to think of copyright as a negative right. -- Scott -----Original Message----- From: Tony Stanco [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, February 07, 2004 8:07 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Peterson, Scott K (HP Legal); 'John Cowan' Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The Copyright Act preempts the GPL Scott, my understanding is the same as Larry's. Copyright provides exclusive plenary rights to the owner. Patents provide the owner only with the right to exclude others. I think the distinction was grounded in the fact that it would be hard to conflict with someone else's copyright in an original work (which usually stood alone), while complex, interrelated processes/machines could easily involve multiple and conflicting patents. As a result, patents are only negative rights and a person's exploitation of a particular patent in subject to the non existence of conflicting patent(s). Best regards, Tony ----- Original Message ----- From: "Lawrence E. Rosen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'Peterson, Scott K (HP Legal)'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "'John Cowan'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, February 06, 2004 8:39 PM Subject: RE: The Copyright Act preempts the GPL > Scott Peterson wrote: > > The rights provided under US copyright law are negative rights (the > > right to exclude others), not positive rights (the right to do > > something yourself). > > I don't think so, Scott. At least that's not how the copyright act > reads: > > "...The owner of copyright under this title has the > exclusive rights to do and to authorize any of the > following...." > > The patent law is exactly the opposite. > > "...Every patent shall contain ... a grant to the patentee ... > to exclude others from using or selling...." > > /Larry Rosen > > -- > license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3 -- license-discuss archive is at http://crynwr.com/cgi-bin/ezmlm-cgi?3
