Development of Creative Commons licenses

["Steven Ericsson-Zenith" <steven AT semeiosis.com>]

Dear Greg,

Greg:
> It sounds like your approach is to determine how
> to withold all your rights, be they copyright,
> patent, trademark, etc. I've not heard you mention
> what rights you actually want to surrender.

I do not know how you draw this conclusion from what I have written.
I gave a perfectly clear example.

To recap, I proposed attribution-no-derivatives to permit anyone to use the 
schema.  I suggested that an additional constraint could be added to that 
copyright statement - and I gave as an example where use of the schema in an 
instance is explicitly public domain.  This is of broader interest since it 
is 
something you might like to say about RSS feeds - and it clarifies the issues 
for aggregators that make use of documents based on the schema.

The push back I expected was that one could not force such a public domain 
constraint upon the user of the schema and I expected questions related to 
metadata about confidential documents.  

My guess is that metadata about private documents encapsulated in the schema 
needs to carry the same privacy constaints - and if the schema instances 
associated with the document are public domain then that presents a problem.

But I would like to find a license that provided for both cases.

In fact the answer may be the business model pragmatic to have two licenses - 
one that enforces public domain on instance documents and a commercial 
license 
that explicitly preserves privacy.

With respect,
Steven



> 
> And if you don't want to surrender any rights,
> then you should simply use "all rights reserved",
> "patent #12345677", and "B is a registered trademark"
> and leave it at that.
> 
> Creative Commons is for people who wish to surrender
> some or all of their intellectual property rights for
> a work to the public. If you're not up to doing that,
> you should hire an intellectual property legal authority
> and tell him you want to protect all your rights.
> 
> He'll know how to protect your interests.
> 
> Greg
> 
> 
> Steven Ericsson-Zenith said:
> >
> > Well, thanks for that - it is an interesting perspective.
> >
> > However, I think trademarks do apply to this. For example, if I call
> my schema
> > the B-schema, and B is my trademark, then either I dilute my mark by
> using it
> > in
> > this way or users are required to get a trademark license to advertize
> the
> > B-Schema instance. My understanding is that you are required to provide
> an
> > explicit license the use the term "B-schema" if you want to use your
> mark.
> >
> > It is my understanding that any document authored by me is my copyright
> -
> > schema, code or not.  The intellectual property associated with any 
> > document
> > I write is also subject to my ownership under law - even if I have not
> pursued
> > a
> > patent, since no one else can patent my ideas if I have published it.
> >
> > I have done enough work in this area to know that the statement "as UK
> > copyright
> > law is concerned, and it should be fairly similar to the rest of the
> world" is
> > niave.  It seems most unlikely despite the wide influence of British
> > common law.
> >
> > I believe that a prohibition of use of the schema that I have suggested
> would
> > be
> > enforcable in both the USA and the UK. I await to be corrected by a legal
> > authority.
> >
> > Don't get me started on patent law ... but ... it seems to me that today's
> > patent law which provides sweeping protection to a whole range of 
> > intellectual
> > property is broken significantly in the favor of large corporations and
> does
> > not
> > serve individual inventors.  I would campaign to change the patent law
> in a
> > number of ways compatible with both the US constitution and the rights
> of the
> > individual inventor. But, as it stands, I concede it is broken and 
> > immoral.
> >
> > I am a US patent holder and have personally filed here and in Europe.
> The
> > associated costs are an outrage.
> >
> > With respect,
> > Steven
> >
> >
> >
> > Geraint Paul Bevan wrote ..
> >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> >> Hash: SHA1
> >>
> >> Steven wrote:
> >>
> >> | What I have in mind is that perhaps there is some assertion that
> >> | can be made in the copyright of the XML schema that specifies the
> >> | copyright of instance documents.
> >>
> >>
> >> I am not a lawyer and I am not an expert on copyright or patents.
> >> However, I suspect that you may not be able to impose constraints on
> >> users of your schema.
> >>
> >> As far as UK copyright law is concerned, and it should be fairly similar
> >> to the rest of the world, there are limits on what is subject to
> >> copyright protection:
> >>
> >>
> >> Quoting:
> >> http://www.intellectual-property.gov.uk/std/faq/copyright/what_protected.htm
> >>
> >>
> >> "Copyright gives rights to the creators of the following kinds of
> >> material or "works":
> >>
> >> "    * original literary works - for example, novels, newspaper
> >> articles, lyrics for songs, and instruction manuals. Computer programs
> >> are also a form of literary work protected by copyright, as are some
> >> types of databases
> >>
> >> [ a list of other things that certainly are not software ]
> >>
> >> "Copyright does not protect ideas, names or titles, or functional or
> >> industrial articles."
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> Consequently, your XML schema definition may not be protected by
> >> copyright (as an industrial article) and I would very much doubt that
> >> instantiation of it would be.
> >>
> >> As far as patent protection is concerned, you only get that if you pay
> >> for it and go through the whole process of applying through the patent
> >> office. In Europe, software patents are not (yet) valid in most
> >> circumstances. In the US they are, but you would probably need to
> >> demonstrate some originality and technical innovation.
> >>
> >> Trademarks do not apply in this case.
> >>
> >> As a non-lawyer and non-expert in the field, I doubt that there is very
> >> much "intellectual property" that you can protect.
> >>
> >>
> >> - --
> >> Geraint Bevan
> >> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/geraint.bevan
> >>
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> 
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