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Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law
book

Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law

by Lawrence Rosen
July 2004
Intermediate to advanced
432 pages
8h 12m
English
Pearson
Content preview from Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law

Royalty Free

Software freedom doesn't require zero price for a copy of the specification describing how to write software. But it does require zero royalties for a license to those patent claims necessary to make, use, and sell open source implementations of that software. A price other than zero for the right to make copies conflicts directly with Open Source Principle # 2.

Therefore, the only reasonable royalty for a patent license for an open standard that can be implemented in open source is zero. The term of art for such a license is royalty free.

Very few of the reasonable and nondiscriminatory patent licenses for industry standards actually charge a royalty. As a practical matter, the word reasonable mostly means zero. But not always, ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0131487876Purchase book