Development of Creative Commons licenses

[drew Roberts <zotz AT 100jamz.com>]

I am not a lawyer either but I think things may be much worse than you ever 
thought.

On Saturday 19 March 2005 11:31 am, Greg London wrote:
> I think I figured out a metaphor that works here.
>
> <metaphor>

I like the following metaphor. I am not disagreeing that that is how things 
should be but when it comes to setting up a factory to make Alice's clocks, 
Bob may find himself in hot water.

I do not necessarily disagree with your point either.

Now, say you buy a book of boat plans (I used to do this) and you build a 
boat 
from the plans in the book (I did this with a friend once.) So far, I think 
you are golden. Then you decide you are going to go into business building 
these boats from plans copyrighted by someone else.

I have read in the past that this is a no-no under current copyright law.

You might also want to investigate what happens to needlepoint and crochet 
people when they try and go into business selling products based on the 
copyrighted designs of others. I seem to recall reading where this is a no-no 
as well. 
>
> Alice is a clock designer and writes a book that
> gives step by step instructions on how to build
> a pendulum clock out of balsa wood and a couple
> of ball point pens for axles.
>
> Alice can copyright her book and prevent anyone
> from copying, distributing, or creating a
> derived work of her book.
>
> Bob discovers the book at a store and buys it.
> He builds an actual clock using the step-by-step
> instructions in the book and the templates
> for how to cut the balsa-wood gears. He builds
> the clock using the exact process described
> in Alice's book.
>
> Bob then sells the clock to Charlie.
>
> Bob then decides that there's a lot of money
> to be made in balsa-wood pendulum clocks and
> sets up a sweatshop in a third world county
> to crank them out by the thousands. He gets
> several stores to carry his clocks. And he
> becomes filthy rich.
>
> Alice sues Bob for copyright infringement,
> saying Bob's clocks are all derivatives of
> her book.
>
> Bob's lawyer then sends a polite letter
> to Alice explaining that the expression
> contained within her book is covered by copyright.
> But for the mechanical design of the clock to
> be protected under Intellectual Property law,
> the design would have to be new and unique
> enough to qualify for PATENT protection.
>
> He then includes a photocopy of several patents
> for mechanical pendulum clocks that are
> hundreds of years old.
>
> <end>
> <analysis>
>
> If Alice can prevent Bob from manufacturing her clock,
> then Alice has patent-like powers that last about 120 years
> or so. Worse yet, Alice gets patent-like powers over a
> design that someone else had invented centuries ago. All she
> did was express the same basic clock design in one book with
> slight modifications.
>
> If Alice's modifications are sufficiently new DESIGN
> (i.e. she comes up with some new way to tell time via a
> pendulum that had NEVER been designed before) then she
> could apply for a patent and prevent Bob from selling
> her clocks.
>
> If the courts rule that Bob's clock is a copyright derivative
> of Alice's clock and therefore subject to Alice's licensing
> requirements, then patent law is pointless, because it can
> always be trumped by a new expression of an old design.
>
> The code on opencores.org is an expression of some
> functionality, the way ALice's book is an expression
> of the functionality of a pendulum clock.
>
> If copyright law can be extended so that physical
> implementations of verilog code are derivatives of
> that code, then copyright law has just extended into
> the functional-domain of patent law.
>
> the verilog code is like Alice's book.
> An ASIC is like Bob's clock.
>
> The only way Alice could prevent Bob from putting
> her verilog code into an ASIC is if her code
> described some functionality that was new enough
> to warrant a patent.
>
> <point>
>
> Patents describe something functional about the natural world.
> A patent gives the inventor exclusive rights to that specific
> functionality, regardless of how it is expressed.
>
> Copyright works express something in language, they convey MEANING.
> But the thing about expression is that there are many ways to
> EXPRESS the same FUNCTIONALITY.
>
> The point of a patent application is to make sure the applicant
> isn't describing some old patent in some new expression. If you
> express an old patent in new words, you cannot patent the function,
> but you could still copyright the expression.
>
> This is Alice's situation. She expressed some old functionality
> in new ways. She wrote a book in her own words that describes
> some old functionality. She cannot prevent the manufacture of
> the thing she describes. But she can copyright her expression of it.
>
> <disclaimer>
>
> I am not a lawyer.
> This could be completely wrong.
> But if it is, things are much worse than I ever thought.
>
I don't know when the example you put forward rule versus when the examples I 
put forward do, but I have been actively interested in copyrights since the 
early 80s and just when I think I may get a handle on how things work, 
something always comes along and throws a monkey wrench into the mix.

We are far afield again. Does CC have (or should they create) a list for 
discussing how copyright law should work and on how to arrange things to 
approximating that working even if the law itself does not change? I think 
this is what CC is trying to do anyway. With options of course.

all the best,

drew