MIT may be considered a single legal entity but is composed of many different 
colleges, laboratories, etc with their own office of tech transfer.   While 
supporting open source is valuable so is supporting entrepreneurs and IP 
policies at research universities will have to support both.  Universities, 
researchers and entrepreneurs depend on IP protection for both revenue and 
grants.

The issues are covered in the ECL v2 discussions from 2006 and apply also to 
the USG.  They are covered on page 12 of the report:

"Two outputs of the Summit addressed these concerns: the ECL 2.0 outbound 
license and the new form of institutional contribution agreement. These 
revisions were designed to accommodate concerns about the reach of the patent 
license provisions in the contributor agreement. The patent license provision 
was modified so that no license would be granted to patents developed by anyone 
other than the author of the contribution, and also to recognize the 
possibility that there may be funding agreements or other prior commitments 
that limit the institution's flexibility to grant a license.

While these licenses represent progress, they also reflect some policy 
decisions by participating institutions that bear long-term thought. For 
example, a license to patents that arise only out of the work of contributors 
to the project does not cover patents that arise out of other work at the 
university, reflecting a choice to protect the ability of individual inventors 
at the university, and the ability of the university itself, to benefit from 
the commercialization of the patent, where licensing these patents in 
connection with community projects may be beneficial to the community as a 
whole."

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/3076/Licensing_and_Policy_Summit_Report_2007.p<https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/3076/Licensing_and_Policy_Summit_Report_2007.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y>df

I don't have any software patents.  I don't support software patents.  But I am 
very very disinclined to give away another researcher's software patents just 
because I open sourced code and my OTT didn't realize that it tread on a patent 
that someone else at the university created.  ECL v2 is designed to make this 
impossible to do accidentally.

From: License-discuss 
<license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss-boun...@opensource.org>>
 on behalf of John Cowan <co...@ccil.org<mailto:co...@ccil.org>>
Reply-To: License Discuss 
<license-discuss@opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss@opensource.org>>
Date: Monday, December 12, 2016 at 5:47 PM
To: "lro...@rosenlaw.com<mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com>" 
<lro...@rosenlaw.com<mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com>>
Cc: License Discuss 
<license-discuss@opensource.org<mailto:license-discuss@opensource.org>>
Subject: Re: [License-discuss] Views on React licensing?


On Mon, Dec 12, 2016 at 4:16 PM, Lawrence Rosen 
<lro...@rosenlaw.com<mailto:lro...@rosenlaw.com>> wrote:

If Yoyodyne or Soylent sue MIT because they had previous exclusive patent 
licenses or contracts, that is court fun for them. It doesn't involve me.

Agreed.  I only mentioned this hypo to defend my claim that if MIT can't keep 
track of what they have licensed to whom, the word "incompetent" is fit for 
purpose, not in any specifically legal sense but in the sense of not being 
ordinarily prudent in the management of their property.  MIT would get a short 
sharp shock if they tried to sell the same piece of real estate to two 
different purchasers on the grounds that proper records were too expensive to 
maintain.

[<LER>] I would tell Yoyodyne to take up their dispute with MIT. I'm not a 
party. The worldwide open source user community is not a party to some secret 
exclusive deal between Yoyodyne and MIT.

Now this I do not understand.  If Yoyodyne is the exclusive licensee, then 
surely it has the right to sue/enjoin you as a user of their patented 
technology, and your claim to have a subsequent license from the former patent 
holder isn't going to help you, particularly if that former patent holder 
disclaims it.  This follows from the fact that if Charlie writes a program that 
unknowingly infringes Alice's patent and then allow Bob to use it, Alice can 
take action against either Bob or Charlie.  In this case, MIT is Charlie, and 
the fact that MIT originally handed over the patent to Alice shouldn't matter: 
when Alice asks for one more nickel, Charlie won't be able to get off the train.

I know that it's not typical for a patent holder to sue Bobs who merely use a 
patented article that they obtain from a non-licensed manufacturer, but that's 
a matter of it being economically inefficient to sue a huge list of known and 
unknown customers, not a derogation of their right to do so.

--
John Cowan          http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan        
co...@ccil.org<mailto:co...@ccil.org>
Knowledge studies others / Wisdom is self-known;
Muscle masters brothers / Self-mastery is bone;
Content need never borrow / Ambition wanders blind;
Vitality cleaves to the marrow / Leaving death behind.    --Tao 33 (Bynner)

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