[Harmony-Drafting] Patent language (was: Beta draft)
Allison Randal
allison at lohutok.net
Wed Jun 22 18:43:19 UTC 2011
On 06/22/2011 12:51 AM, Radcliffe, Mark wrote:
> I think that we can put the definition of Patent Claims with the patent
> license. However, the current formulation has several problems:
>
> 1. The license should be under a defined set of rights. The current
> draft refers to "patent license" which does not make clear what rights
> are being licensed. The definition refers to certain rights "including
> without limitation" and then includes the patent claims definitions.
> Instead, the definition should be limited to the claims as defined not
> "including without limitation".
This language mostly came straight from your earlier draft. But, I think
what you're getting at is that defining the claims after the license
grant leaves it unclear exactly what's granted in the license. Working
that in...
> 2. The concept of "any portion"should be included because it is
> needed for MPL.
It says "portions of such combination". Or, are you looking to have that
repeated in the second sentence? Those two sentences are near-duplicates
of each other, which seems a poor choice of wording. Working that in...
> 3. The concept of "later acquired"should be included because it is
> needed for GPLv3
It says "now or in the future". Changing that to "now owned or acquired
in the future" is more similar to the Alpha language, but doesn't seem
quite right since we're not just talking about patents the contributor
owns, but also "control or have the right to grant". No change for now,
any specific wording suggestions?
Proposed revised language:
------
2.2 Patent License
For patent claims including, without limitation, method, process, and
apparatus claims which You [or Your Affiliates] own, control or have the
right to grant, now or in the future, You grant to Us a perpetual,
worldwide, non-exclusive, transferable, royalty-free, irrevocable patent
license, with the right to sublicense these rights to multiple tiers of
sublicensees, to make, have made, use, sell, offer for sale, import and
otherwise transfer the Contribution and the Contribution in combination
with the Material (and portions of such combination). This license is
granted only to the extent that the exercise of the licensed rights
infringes such patent claims; and provided that this license is
conditioned upon compliance with Section 2.3.
------
> 4. Section 3b should read as follows since patent claim is no
> longer defined (or even used as "patent claim").
>
> You \(i) own the Copyright in the Contribution and (ii) have the right
> to grant the rights based on patents in Section 2.2
Counterproposal:
(b) You [or Your Affiliates] have the rights required to make the grant
of rights in Section 2.
Allison
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