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0 pointsSacho8y ago0 comments

Why would Facebook sue for copyright infringement? Suing them for patent infringement doesn't invalidate the copyright - not for BSD+PATENTS, and certainly not for MIT. Your scenario doesn't make sense.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

LeoNatan258y ago· 3 in thread

What exactly doesn’t make sense? What in the theoretical scenario do you not understand?

Here is the scenario without the … emotional baggage:

——

Company X has patent P.

Company X releases open source O which provides implementation of patent P.

There is no patent grant in the license of open source O.

Company Y uses open source O.

——

Can company X sue company Y for infringement of patent P? I think the answer to this is “yes”.

SachoOP8y ago

What does this scenario have to do with "counter-suing" which you mentioned in your parent post?

WRT patent grants, there's a few tidbits here and there about implicit patent grants(https://copyleft.org/guide-next/comprehensive-gpl-guidech7.h... and http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Implicit_patent_licence) but hardly any settled case law. At any rate, this is the situation with every MIT license, so I don't know why it's ominous.

detaro8y ago

I think they were nitpicking your choice of words. "copyright infringement" is not the same as infringing on a patent.

LeoNatan258y ago

Right, sorry. I meant “patent infringement”, of course.

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