fenics team mailing list archive

[Johan Hake <johan.hake@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday February 9 2011 15:37:38 Andy Ray Terrel wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 12:37 PM, Anders Logg <logg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 10:23:44AM -0800, Johan Hake wrote:
> >> On Wednesday February 9 2011 10:14:51 Johan Hake wrote:
> >> > On Wednesday February 9 2011 10:10:04 Anders Logg wrote:
> >> > > On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 09:52:21AM -0800, Johan Hake wrote:
> >> > > > Hello!
> >> > > > 
> >> > > > UCSD is not willing to sign the consent statement about GPL 3...
> >> > > > 
> >> > > > From the answer I got:
> >> > > >   LGPL incorporates GPL 3, and that is the problem. Earlier
> >> > > > versions of the GPL did not deal in patent rights, while Version
> >> > > > 3 does. It would commit a license to the entire UC patent estate,
> >> > > > whether the inventors were an informed participant or not. I
> >> > > > would need to consult further with UC General Counsel for a
> >> > > > detailed answer, but the spirit is that the license overreaches
> >> > > > in its commitments to patent rights beyond what the university is
> >> > > > willing to do.
> >> > > 
> >> > > That seems strange. So UCSD will want to retain the right to sue
> >> > > users of DOLFIN if you should happen to add code to DOLFIN that
> >> > > infringes on some patent held by UCSD?
> >> > 
> >> > I have no clue what it means. But I will ask.
> >> 
> >> Here is a more elaborated explaination:
> >> 
> >>   The language is pretty clear in section 11 of the GPL V3 license - it
> >>   commits all the rights of the Licensor (the Regents of the University
> >> of California) to a license. Our normal licensing practice is to
> >> license one technology at a time, and we do not license the other
> >> patents along with it. Our guiding principles for licensing are at this
> >> link
> >> 
> >>   <http://invent.ucsd.edu/faculty/policies/guiding-principles.shtml>
> >> 
> >> Johan
> > 
> > Is it this paragraph?
> > 
> >  "Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free
> >  patent license under the contributor's essential patent claims, to
> >  make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and otherwise run, modify and
> >  propagate the contents of its contributor version."
> > 
> > Assuming that something in your contract makes UCSD the "contributor"
> > and not you personally, this means that UCSD grants any patent
> > licenses needed to run the code that you put into FEniCS.
> > 
> > The other option is to reserve the right to sue the users of FEniCS
> > for any UCSD patents that your code in FEnICS is infringing upon.
> > 
> > As far as I understand, it doesn't say anything about other patents
> > that UCSD have that are unrelated to the actual code in FEniCS.
> > 
> > If they refuse to sign the consent form, will they also refuse to let
> > you continue to contribute code to FEniCS? And sue us all for the code
> > you have contributed so far?
> > 
> > --
> > Anders
> 
> In the US, code and patentable "Intellectual Property" is usually
> considered property of the employer.  So the contributor has no right
> to give away the rights of a company's patents.  If they sign this
> form and Johan uploads something covered under another patent then it
> affects their rights to patent royalties.  So in effect they are
> saying they reserve the right to sue FEniCS (but probably Simula) if
> you encroach on their patents.
> 
> In practice, most open source code from US universities is distributed
> without regard to the law and for the most part everyone ignores it.
> For example, TTI-C should be the copyright holder on much of the code
> that you wrote in Chicago.

Does your university have the same policies? I guess I should just kept quite 
then...

Johan

> -- Andy
> 
> >> > > > Are there any others that have got a similare answer?
> >> > > 
> >> > > No problems so far. Here's what we have so far:
> >> > >   http://www.fenicsproject.org/pub/copyright/authors/
> >> > >   http://www.fenicsproject.org/pub/copyright/institutions/
> >> > 
> >> > I guess the Cambridge statement is not correct?
> >> > 
> >> > Johan
> >> > 
> >> > 
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