A US Patent can not be ever open-sourced. In legal and logical terms, those are on the pretty much opposite sides of the spectrum.
The closest that comes to mind is "Free Nestlé bottled water".
A US Patent can not be ever open-sourced. In legal and logical terms, those are on the pretty much opposite sides of the spectrum.
The closest that comes to mind is "Free Nestlé bottled water".
why? the usual OSI licenses all work through copyright, and through conditional granting of rights (hence the name license)
for a parent granting irrevocable royalty-free usage rights to anyone is equivalent to putting it into the public domain, no?
both copyright and a patent grants exclusive rights to the rightsholder (right to perform, modify, or in case of patents to use the invention in the way covered by one of the claims), and the rightsholder is free to include more persons in the group of authorized users (ie. extend the rights to others, and can do so conditionally - hence the Apache2 patent grant)
can you please explain where my understanding is incorrect or missing something? thanks!
Copyright and patents are very different beasts.
For example there a lot of ways to use the so-called priority of the US patent to file other patents, including elsewhere in the world.
US Americans sadly often forget that the majority of the planet is not the USA. Here in Thailand, US and EU pharma companies have managed to get patents on 15 year old basic stuff like anti-histaminic meds. "Oh, but the system of limited monopoly in the US worked for us?". Yeah. But in Europe, the cost per pill is somewhere around $0.08. In Europe it's about $0.02. In Thailand it's $0.80 because Zyrtec managed to file a patent here re-using the priority of the US patent. And wage-adjusted in Thailand the cost per pill is about $15 per pill. You better don't have an allergy over here. So: Patents can have long-term consequences.
Back to IT: Have a look at the whole patent troll industry. The biggest chunk of junk patents that they bought are coming from "we will not do any harm" owners/filers. A lot can happen in 20 years.