Rjack wrote: [...] > The patent judges of the Federal Circuit seemingly are not > familiar with the provisions of 17 USC 301 copyright preemption.
>From comments at http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/08/open-source-lic.html ------- Posted by: smashmouth football | Aug 14, 2008 at 07:17 PM I think that these copyleft licenses are great and all, but this decision ought to be rubbing people the wrong way. Essentially, the court found that breach of a contract clause (attribution) can give rise to "copyright infringement!" The court bent over backwards to make attribute a "condition" on the license grant, but I was left entirely unconvinced. The grant was purposefully broad. It does not seem that the person breached the granting clause. They breached other provisions. This is bad because most grants have some "catch-all" language that states: Licensor grants to licensee a non-exclusive right to do x under Licensor's patents [copyrights], provided licensee complies with the terms of this agreement. Does that mean ANY violation of the contract gives rise to an infringement? E.g. if you make ONE late payment and you're now an infringer? Yikes! That said, presumably a licensor can terminate the agreement for breach and then on-going activity would be infringement. But that is simply not what this court has done. All around, really, not a good day for the consumers. Posted by: mmmbeer | Aug 14, 2008 at 07:57 PM Do you want to hear three judges and two attorneys confused about copyright law? Take a listen to the audio. I did, and I am just shaking my head thinking that copyright law is not their bag. After clicking the following link, type "08-1001" in the Case Number block: http://oralarguments.cafc.uscourts.gov/searchscript.asp ------- He he. regards, alexander. -- http://gng.z505.com/index.htm (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards too, whereas GNU cannot.) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
