Development of Creative Commons licenses

[Rob Myers <robmyers AT mac.com>]

On 3 Jan 2005, at 18:04, Greg London wrote:

> Johannes Ernst said:
> > The only issue I'm raising on this list is:
> > do or don't the CC licenses currently have any impact on IP rights
> > other than copyright.
> >
> > The possible answers seem to be:
> >   1) they do not touch any rights that may or may not exist under
> > trademark, patent etc. law
> >   2) they do touch those rights, and this is how
> >   3) the issue is unclear.
> >
> > I think the easiest fix would be to answer my question per #1, and
> > clearly state so in the license text.
>
> I'm not sure how CC licenses relate to patents.

I don't think they do, they are specifically Copyright licenses. The 
only other rights they touch are the various copyright-related rights 
like collecting rights. International CC licenses touch (or are caused 
trouble by) Moral Rights. But these are all aspects of Copyright. 
Trademarks, patents, and other "Intellectual Property" aren't covered.

So the answer is basically 1, apart from rights that accompany 
copyright such as collecting rights and moral rights.

I'd imagine this is because the CC licenses are designed to cover 
cultural works, not software, which is the only kind of "writing" that 
can be both copyrighted and patented.

I've seen cartoon characters that have copyright and trademark status 
both claimed, so that might be another example of one item being 
covered by two different types of protection, but again I don't think 
the CC licenses cover this.

- Rob.