On Mon, Jul 09, 2018 at 08:29:08AM +0000, Tsunakawa, Takayuki wrote:
> > There are arguments made that TPL (and BSD, MIT etc) already includes an
> > implicit patent grant, but while a longstanding theory, it's to my
> > knowledge not legally been tested.
>
> When we find a reasonable consensus here, I'd like to have our legal
> department write a patent grant statement, and then have it reviewed
> in this ML. Is the above statement of Red Hat's enough?
You're acting as a go-between between your legal department and
executive directors on the one hand, and the PG community on the other.
That's not going to be an efficient conversation unless your legal
department understands open source communities and is willing to tailor
their patent grants to suit.
Also, these are *business* decisions that should be made by your
directors, not by your legal department. So really, this should be a
discussion between an authorized director at your company and the
community, with all discussions with your legal department being
internal to your company.
Also, your legal department will almost certainly default to the most
restrictive patent grants. That will contribute to making this
conversation unproductive.
My advice is that you relay all of this to your legal department and
your executives, and ask them make the most liberal patent grant
possible such that the PG community can live with it.
Also, I would advise you that patents can be the kiss of death for
software technologies. For example, in the world of cryptography, we
always look for patent-free alternatives and build them from scratch if
need be, leading to the non-use of patented algorithms/protocols in many
cases. Your best bet is to make a grant so liberal that the only
remaining business use of your patents is defensive against legal
attacks on the holder.
(IMO software patent lifetimes should be commensurate with the effort it
takes to come up with and develop an idea for the field -- five to eight
years max, not seventeen or twenty.)
Nico
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