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    By my understanding, a patent in the US that ends up just being "prior art" (i.e., a method that existed before the patent-holder actually developed the patent) is essentially void, as it's not a new idea. Thus, even if Jacobsen had forsaken all copyright on DecoderPro, it would seem to me that the court would still have ruled against Katzer given proof that Jacobsen's work came first. (The real grief-saver would have been registering the copyright with the Library of Congress if he didn't do that, as then there would be official government documentation of the prior art.) Commented Aug 10, 2015 at 15:56
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    Licensing and patents are orthogonal to each other. If someone wants to steal my code and patent some idea in it, he can just as well copy it if it is GPL and then claim I stole it from him. What matters for patent validity is who can prove what came first. Commented Aug 14, 2015 at 17:18
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    Jacobsen would have had a lot of grief, regardless of the license. Defending against a lawsuit, specially from a deep-pocket company, is expensive and drawn out. "Winning" but ending up broke is no fun. Commented Jan 6, 2016 at 12:11
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    @vonbrand idk what country Jacobsen is in or how it works in his country, but at least in the countries i'm familiar with, the loser usually have to pay the winner's court fees. (Norway, Sweden, and Denmark) Commented May 26, 2019 at 21:25
  • @hanshenrik, this was a United States case, and the US does not have loser-pays rules except in cases of egregious abuse. As a US citizen, I'm glad of this -- it's hard enough for a private citizen to win a lawsuit against a corporation as it is, and those suits are already ruinously expensive for an individual, more than enough to discourage frivolity; if one had to factor in paying for expensive corporate council if one were to lose, it would make it even riskier to try to recover damages done by a deep-pocketed opponent than it is now. Commented Oct 17, 2021 at 20:56