Magnus Danielson wrote: > Neither does the BSD license attempt to indicate that it deals with patents, > which actually makes things easier since then it assumes the normal laws are > in action. This still leaves questions about the content of the design which > is > covered. I really wonder if the OHL patent immunity clauses really fly. I > would > not trust them to. I will have to check the details, but I don't think that it > can be written out. Working it the opposite, it should then make it clear that > when sharing a design this way, it manifests itself as an open publication and > thus any techniques disclosed is to be considered as public and thus can not > be > patented by a third party or the original contributor afterhand.
(We should probably avoid boring the non-IP-interested time-nuts to death by moving this off list, or to the technocrat.net/OHL discussion forum.) The patent immunity may or may not hold up -- but you can say that about almost any legal provision! However, when you grant an immunity -- a promise not to exercise whatever rights you might have -- that has value even if you don't actually own a patent; providing the other party with peace of mind that they won't be sued is a benefit in and of itself. That's the hook that the OHL hangs its hat on. Publication only has a blocking effect if you haven't already filed a patent application (and in the US, you actually have one year after publication to file). So the two concepts aren't mutually exclusive. John _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
