Questions tagged [patents]
For questions about the usages and roles of patents within open projects. This can concern protection of projects/patents, and their implications in licensing, projects, and usages.
76 questions
7 votes
2 answers
620 views
Sisvel and the patent grant of VP8/VP9
Sorry if this in the wrong place, I'm not certain if this question belongs here on Open Source StackExchange, on Patents StackExchange, or on Law StackExchange. The documentation for the WebM project ...
4 votes
1 answer
323 views
Can the patent grant in BSD 2-Clause Plus Patent be simply added or removed?
Suppose I receive a copy of some software with the BSD 2-Clause Plus Patent license. Can I make some modifications to that software, then distribute my changed version of that software under the BSD ...
- 161
4 votes
0 answers
282 views
Patent encumbrances on CRYSTALS-Kyber?
NIST claims that they “[have] entered into” an agreement with the holders of patents US9246675/EP2837128B1 and US9094189B2/EP2537284B1, to allow people to implement and operate the Kyber cryptosystem— ...
3 votes
2 answers
309 views
Patent encumbrances on Falcon?
Does anyone have any hard evidence what exactly are the terms and conditions of the patent license that Dr. Whyte / OnBoard Security has pledged to provide to any prospective implementers of the ...
6 votes
2 answers
555 views
Apache 2.0 and patent grant to the code not related to the contribution
Imagine, a company, contributes to a huge Apache 2.0 project. The company owns a patent. The project is huge, and there's a small fragment of its code which infringes on the patent. The company ...
4 votes
1 answer
222 views
What is the best weak copyleft licence against patent trolling?
To avoid an XY question, the general requirements I have are: The licence should not impose operational complexity for downstream users of a library (users should not be forced to think about linking)...
- 185
4 votes
1 answer
984 views
What is a "patent-granting" license?
I am beginning to learn about open source software licenses. I am especially interested in how open source licenses interact with patents. I've seen the term "patent-granting" used several ...
- 143
8 votes
2 answers
1k views
Stack Exchange's CC-BY-SA and Patents
All contributions to the Stack Exchange Websites are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC-BY-SA), either version 2.5, 3.0, or 4.0 depending on the post date. This ...
8 votes
4 answers
2k views
What's the meaning (qualifications) of "machine" in GPL's "machine-readable source code"?
I'm trying to understand what is (not) a "machine" in GPL's "machine-readable source code". GPL requires you to share (a) the preferred-form-of-the-work-for-making-changes-in-it, ...
- 183
4 votes
4 answers
506 views
AGPL-3 and patents
I have developed a process which I am in the process of patenting, and would like to release all or some of the implementation under an open source license (likely AGPL-3). I am trying to understand ...
- 143
16 votes
2 answers
3k views
Protect public project from potential patents
We have a simple 3D-printable object, which can be used as a medical aid. We would like to publish this object free to use to the public. We would like to keep this object and further revisions and ...
- 161
4 votes
1 answer
326 views
Do I need to patent before open-sourcing hardware?
As I understand it, software open-source licenses are backed up by copyright law, but copyright law does not (in the US) apply to hardware. Does this mean that, before issuing any sort of open-source ...
- 159
1 vote
1 answer
153 views
Open source software that limits competition with a patent [duplicate]
I want to release my software under an open-source license. I got a patent on the part of it. Is there an open-source license that will allow people to use my software but will not grant a patent ...
- 109
2 votes
1 answer
255 views
What does Section 2.3 a in the MPL 2.0 mean?
Section 2.3 a) of the MPL 2.0 States: no patent license is granted by a Contributor: (a) for any code that a Contributor has removed from Covered Software What does code a contributor has "...
3 votes
1 answer
524 views
Using a Library Under MIT License with Patented Algorithms
If a library is licensed under the MIT license but has patented algorithms in its source, can I just pull out the source files I need that don't contain any of the aforementioned material and ...
- 133