[cc-licenses] Subject Matter: Semiconductor Masks and Design Rights

Sarah Pearson sarah at creativecommons.org
Fri Apr 13 12:14:03 EDT 2012


Thanks for weighing in, Christopher. Here are a few considerations for us
to think about as we decide on various categories of rights --

1) Every right we include in the license grant creates the possibility that
someone holding those rights may apply the license, even if that same
rights holder does not own the copyright. This raises a number of
challenges.
- CC licenses were built as copyright licenses, so the license may not be
the right fit if applied only to rights other than copyright. If the scope
of the additional right being licensed varies significantly from the scope
of copyright, it would be very confusing for someone holding only that
additional right to apply a CC license. (For example, if that additional
right does not allow adaptations of the work, we would have to somehow
ensure that those rights holders only applied the ND licenses.) For this
reason (among others), we need to thoroughly understand the scope of any
additional rights we include in the license grant.

2) As a general matter, we likely only want to include rights likely to be
held by the copyright owner. If not, we greatly increase the risk of the
scenario I described above, which increases the complexity of the licenses
considerably. (Otherwise, how would licensees know what permission they are
getting when they use a CC license?) That means a baseline question for any
new right is likely: *Is the right likely to be held by the copyright
owner? *

3) Even where the copyright owner holds additional rights, we still must
keep in mind that the license was designed as a copyright license. Because
some other areas of law have extremely different rights and subject matter,
we will want to think very carefully about the implications of adding any
significantly different types of rights (such as patent or trademark).

4) Where it does not make sense for us to include a particular category of
rights in the license grant, a waiver is another option. This approach
avoids the scenario above where someone holding only rights other than
copyright applies a CC license. But it would have the benefit of
neutralizing rights owned by the copyright holder that might interfere with
the copyright license. Of course, CC's experience with the database rights
waiver should lead us to approach this option with caution as well.

5) Where we do not include additional rights in the license or waiver,
those rights may prevent licensees from exercising the rights granted by CC
licenses. This is an obvious point, but one worth making because it is the
reason we are considering the issue at all.

Curious if others have additional considerations to add to the discussion.

best,
Sarah

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 4:24 PM, Christopher Covington <cov at vt.edu> wrote:

> For whatever it's worth, I think semiconductor mask rights are so
> similar to copyright that they should be given the same
> treatment--licensed rather than waived. Design patents should probably
> be treated similarly to traditional patents. I for one am in favor of an
> explicit patent grant. I don't have much more than a piecemeal
> understanding of all the issues and a gut feeling to motivate these
> positions, however.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher
>
> On Thu, 2012-04-12 at 10:15 -0700, Sarah Pearson wrote:
> > Thanks very much for this concrete proposal, Christopher. We have
> > added it to the 4.0 wiki.
> >
> > Defining the scope of the license is the most challenging aspect of
> > the 4.0 drafting process. We continue to struggle with the tension
> > between wanting the license to be as comprehensive as possible to give
> > licensees all of the rights they need to truly exercise the rights
> > granted, and on the other hand, preventing it from being so broad it
> > includes rights that are not likely to be held by a single licensor.
> >
> > Note there is also a second question as to whether these rights beyond
> > copyright should be licensed and subject to all of the license
> > conditions, or whether they should simply be waived or not asserted by
> > the licensor (and if so, which rights should fall into which
> > category). The initial draft of 4.0 includes a waiver of "ancillary
> > rights" to the extent possible and necessary for the licensee to
> > exercise the rights granted under the license. We are very curious to
> > hear thoughts on whether this dual approach is practical and useful.
> >
> > All of these issues are extremely important for receiving community
> > feedback. Any input would be much appreciated.
> >
> > best,
> > Sarah
> >
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 3:59 AM, Christopher Covington <cov at vt.edu>
> > wrote:
> >         With the expansion of rights licensed expanding to include
> >         database
> >         rights, I'd like to propose also adding other sui generis
> >         rights,
> >         specifically semiconductor mask rights and design rights.
> >         These were
> >         both recently added to a modified version of the Apache
> >         license to come
> >         up with the Solderpad Open License [1].
> >
> >         1. http://solderpad.org/licenses/SHL-0.51/
> >
> >         Regards,
> >         Christopher
> >
> >         _______________________________________________
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