[cc-community] Washington Federal Court confirms that free licences are enforceable
Terry Hancock
hancock at anansispaceworks.com
Sun Aug 17 12:35:28 EDT 2008
Patrick Anderson wrote:
> Are you saying copyright and patent laws are not applicable where it
> can be shown there is no economic value?
In the US, as I understand it (though IANAL etc), a contract can be
thrown out if no "consideration" has been paid. This is supposed to be a
protection from frivolous or fraudulent contracts. I think the theory is
that if you had to pay money (or do something else that costs you), then
you can be understood to know you are getting into a contractual
relationship with somebody, and therefore you can be considered liable
for your decision.
OTOH, if no money changes hands, you might've just been duped into
signing something (or otherwise "indicating agreement") without really
realizing what you were signing up for.
This is why a lot of otherwise non-financial contracts in the US will
ask you to pay $2 or some other nominal fee as consideration.
OTOH, I think there are a lot of exceptions, and I don't think that
money is the only sort of consideration that is accepted. A copyleft is
a bit of a stretch, though, because you "pay copyleft" long after you
"agree" to a copyleft license (and sometimes not at all).
There have been some challenges to GPL licensing (not sure if any made
it to court, but I don't think so), claiming that the software was
"given away", so it can't have strings attached. Personally, I think
it's a pretty flimsy argument, but it has been made. In fact, I think
SCO trotted this one out early in their case against IBM (or rather in
the PR/FUD whirlwind surrounding it).
> What is the your definition of "economic value" in this case?
I guess a good comparison would be mineral rights. When you sell mineral
rights, you are really selling on the possibility that something
valuable might be found on your land. Copyleft is similar -- you are
agreeing to share your code if you produce anything worth your trouble
to publish.
Actually, it sounds like "attribution" may've been the only requirement
in this particular case, but reputation certainly has "economic value".
Anyway, the salient point of the ruling for us is simply that a copyleft
license is held to be legally enforceable in the US -- there are still
few enough such cases for each such ruling to be considered significant.
There may also be some significance to the details of this case in just
how much a copyleft can cover.
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock (hancock at AnansiSpaceworks.com)
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.AnansiSpaceworks.com
More information about the cc-community
mailing list