Open core licensing, also known as commercial extensions, is a licensing regime that offers core components for free, but charges licensees for additional premium products. The approach is a twist on the dual licensing approach where the vendor, as copyright holder, makes the source code freely available, but also offers the same code under a […]
A recent proposal by European Commissioners Meglena Kuneva and Viviane Reding outlined a number of consumer protections relating to licensing agreements. In the event that the proposal becomes law, software companies could be held liable for their code. The directive requires that products, including software licensed under licensing agreements, be held to a higher standard […]
Adam Bucci is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall taking the "Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property" course. I would like to address the impact that open source software has had on our intellectual property regime. In this post, I will: (i) outline some strong claims for significantly diluting - if not wholly […]
Faraaz Damji is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. In Yochai Benkler's article, “Coase's Penguin, or Linux and The Nature of the Firm” (Yale Law Journal, volume 112, online), Benkler attempts to address a major economic concern about open source software: What motivates contributors? […]
Akari Sano is a first year law student at Osgoode Hall and is taking the Legal Values: Challenges in Intellectual Property course. Open Source Software, the next vendor lock in? A recent CBC article stated the federal government is seeking tenders on information about free software for the first time. It quoted Open Source software […]
I feel quite excited seeing people claiming a big triumph of open source on the decision of the U.S. court ruling on Jacobsen v. Katzer case. However, after a closer examination I felt that this is, as Prof. D’Agostino described Robertson v. Thomson, a case where it is hard to tell winner from loser. The […]
In a judgment pronounced in early August, which will encourage the open-source movement (Jacobsen v. Katzer, available at http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions/08-1001.pdf), a US Court of Appeals (Federal Circuit) held that a copyright holder can control the future distribution and modification of her work (through, for instance, means such as open-source licenses) even if she has dedicated the […]
August 13, 2008 was a day of vindication for plaintiff Robert Jacobsen, as the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, in vacating and remanding a U.S. District Court decision, held that an “open source” software [1] copyright license can be enforceable. Jacobsen oversees the Java Model Railroad Interface (“JRMI”) project, which created DecoderPro, […]
A U.S. appellate court recently held in Jacobsen v. Katzer that copyright holders who dedicate their work for free public use are entitled to enforce an open-source copyright license to restrict the work's future distribution and modification. The Court ruled that open-source licenses are enforceable under copyright law, not merely under contract law, thereby providing […]
IBM is going to offer free programs to compete with Microsoft’s Office programs. A new attempt for some good old Microsoft-bashing, IBM failed in 1990 to compete head-on with its OS/2 system, and an ambitious plan to challenge one of the most lucrative businesses for Microsoft. The more important question here is, not if IBM […]