4 ms·

Chris Lattner has commented on the OP: ----- Disclaimer: I'm not an apple employee and not am not lawyer, this is just my understanding of the situation havin

Chris Lattner has commented on the OP: ----- Disclaimer: I'm not an apple employee and not am not lawyer, this is just my understanding of the situation having spent lots of time talking to lawyers and other experts about this: I agree with much of the sentiment that software patents are often silly and the system is broken in many ways. This patent is a reasonable example of that (patenting syntactic sugar for monads, really?). I have no idea if there is prior art, but I wouldn't be surprised. For sake of discussion, lets assume the patent is valid. Even if I and others don't like it, the software patent system exists. As is pointed out upthread, one of the major reasons that Swift uses the Apache 2 license is to provide more certainty for the community w.r.t. licensing and patents. An additional bonus of the Apache 2 license is that the open source project as a whole benefits from companies having and contributing their patents under the terms of the license: to say more directly, it is good for the Swift project that Apple has this patent and has contributed it to the project. The reason for this is the Apache patent revocation clause 1, the end of bullet 3: >If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. This basically says that if someone sues someone else over Swift then they lose access to the patents contributed to the project, and are therefore subject to countersuits. This is a significant part of the protection that the Apache license provides (it is a big deterent to lawsuits in general) but it only has teeth if there are actually patents in play! The LLVM.org community is actively working on a multi-year relicensing effort specifically to achieve these sorts of projects for LLVM as well. -Chris ----- Am I misreading this to mean that if Apple sues someone for infringement over the patents they have been granted, they immediately lose those patents?

vageli 8y ago
> >If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. > Am I misreading this to mean that if Apple sues someone for infringement over the patents they have been granted, they immediately lose those patents? You in this case is likely a defined term with a narrow meaning and likely does not refer to Apple (which is probably referred to as We, Us, "the company", etc) in the document.
- geofft 8y ago
  Right, also it's for "any patent licenses granted to You under this License" - if Apple owns the patent, they have no need for Swift's license to grant them a patent license. They own it. (They are not being licensed the patents by the government, and they're certainly not being licensed them under the terms of Swift's license.)
- oflannabhra 8y ago
  OK, so it sounds like for Apache 2.0 to have any teeth, there have to be actual patents in play. Since Apple has received the patents, not through the Apache 2.0 license, but from the USPTO, they would not lose access to those patents should they sue for infringement over them. IAMAL, but it seems like there still might be a case to be made for Apple's use of Swift to be covered through the Apache 2.0 license. It seems like the most logical explanation of this whole thing is that Apple wants to ensure that all users of Swift are free from litigation. To do so, they used the Apache 2.0 license to cover the code. However, the license requires there to be patents that exist, so that enforcement clauses prevent trolls from being granted a patent and then going after users of Swift. So, Apple filed for some patents that cover aspects of Swift.
maxdesiatov 8y ago
The biggest question here is whether this means they lose the patents when they sue something that's not covered by Derivative Works as defined in Apache 2.0? Looks like an implementation of a compiler not from Apple (that is, not a fork, or one that diverged too much from the original) or different languages that overlap with the patent would be infringing even if they used Apache 2.0 as well.
DannyBee 8y ago
IP lawyer here. No, that is a correct interpretation. The reason it doesn't matter is because of this: "then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work" As the owner of the patents, Apple doesn't need this license to have rights to those patents. They have rights otherwise. Now, it would terminate the rights they have to other people's patents under the license. (IE if a contributor submitted something the contributor owned a patent to, apple would lose rights to that patent)
- abtinf 8y ago
  Is there a potential for a kind of legal armageddon one day if companies had a real incentive to fight each other over one of these massive Apache-2-based open source projects? For example, with Swift, IBM is a major code contributor and runs significant portions of the project. IBM is one of the largest patent holders in the world. If Apple and IBM ever had a patent dispute involving swift, wouldn't that naturally lead to attorneys scrutinizing every other similarly licensed open source project to find an angle against each other or their partners? Wouldn't that then lead to other companies getting drawn into the dispute? And once the gates are opened, any long-simmering patent issues would be easy to add... affecting more projects and companies... What would have happened if the Microsoft/Google/Android dispute involved Apache 2? IANAL, but these boilerplate patent-agreements-in-open-source-licenses seem scarier than just leaving things ambiguous.
  - erikpukinskis 8y ago
    The worst case scenario in any patent fight is you are forced to A) give some chunk of your profit to someone else while you B) reallocate development resources to invent something new that lets you keep doing business without relying on the patent In the end, B) is valuable and A) costs money and they probably cancel out, financially.
lmilcin 8y ago
What you misread is that the patent is awarded to Apple, not Swift. Apple is not being released under Apache 2 license and Apple is not restricted to using the patent only for Swift. If they decide tomorrow to have another language that is not being released under Apache 2 license then there is nothing stopping them from using this feature as the patent is already theirs. Also, has anybody noticed that every single language in existence borrows features from some other language FOR FREE? If all languages started patenting their features then we soon will be completely boggled with lawsuits or unable to invent new, better languages as they will not be able to use already established convenient features. There are only this many simple convenient ways to denote programming language features. There is limited number of single character operators and ways you can organize them. Granting patents to single characters is just stupid.
- smaddox 8y ago
  Exactly! Apache 2 may protect users of Swift from suits for use of Swift itself, but it does not protect everyone else from suits for use of the concept elsewhere.
  - maxdesiatov 8y ago
    Including from suits from Apple itself for using concepts of Swift elsewhere in projects that were developed from scratch, not forked from Apple's projects, right?
    - AsyncAwait 8y ago
      Yes, that is my understanding.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- agumonkey 8y ago
  patenting syntax might fall in the same box as patenting number sequences
- 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

vageli 8y ago

> >If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed. > Am I misreading this to mean that if Apple sues someone for infringement over the patents they have been granted, they immediately lose those patents? You in this case is likely a defined term with a narrow meaning and likely does not refer to Apple (which is probably referred to as We, Us, "the company", etc) in the document.

geofft 8y ago
Right, also it's for "any patent licenses granted to You under this License" - if Apple owns the patent, they have no need for Swift's license to grant them a patent license. They own it. (They are not being licensed the patents by the government, and they're certainly not being licensed them under the terms of Swift's license.)
oflannabhra 8y ago
OK, so it sounds like for Apache 2.0 to have any teeth, there have to be actual patents in play. Since Apple has received the patents, not through the Apache 2.0 license, but from the USPTO, they would not lose access to those patents should they sue for infringement over them. IAMAL, but it seems like there still might be a case to be made for Apple's use of Swift to be covered through the Apache 2.0 license. It seems like the most logical explanation of this whole thing is that Apple wants to ensure that all users of Swift are free from litigation. To do so, they used the Apache 2.0 license to cover the code. However, the license requires there to be patents that exist, so that enforcement clauses prevent trolls from being granted a patent and then going after users of Swift. So, Apple filed for some patents that cover aspects of Swift.

maxdesiatov 8y ago

The biggest question here is whether this means they lose the patents when they sue something that's not covered by Derivative Works as defined in Apache 2.0? Looks like an implementation of a compiler not from Apple (that is, not a fork, or one that diverged too much from the original) or different languages that overlap with the patent would be infringing even if they used Apache 2.0 as well.

DannyBee 8y ago

IP lawyer here. No, that is a correct interpretation. The reason it doesn't matter is because of this: "then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work" As the owner of the patents, Apple doesn't need this license to have rights to those patents. They have rights otherwise. Now, it would terminate the rights they have to other people's patents under the license. (IE if a contributor submitted something the contributor owned a patent to, apple would lose rights to that patent)

abtinf 8y ago
Is there a potential for a kind of legal armageddon one day if companies had a real incentive to fight each other over one of these massive Apache-2-based open source projects? For example, with Swift, IBM is a major code contributor and runs significant portions of the project. IBM is one of the largest patent holders in the world. If Apple and IBM ever had a patent dispute involving swift, wouldn't that naturally lead to attorneys scrutinizing every other similarly licensed open source project to find an angle against each other or their partners? Wouldn't that then lead to other companies getting drawn into the dispute? And once the gates are opened, any long-simmering patent issues would be easy to add... affecting more projects and companies... What would have happened if the Microsoft/Google/Android dispute involved Apache 2? IANAL, but these boilerplate patent-agreements-in-open-source-licenses seem scarier than just leaving things ambiguous.
- erikpukinskis 8y ago
  The worst case scenario in any patent fight is you are forced to A) give some chunk of your profit to someone else while you B) reallocate development resources to invent something new that lets you keep doing business without relying on the patent In the end, B) is valuable and A) costs money and they probably cancel out, financially.

lmilcin 8y ago

What you misread is that the patent is awarded to Apple, not Swift. Apple is not being released under Apache 2 license and Apple is not restricted to using the patent only for Swift. If they decide tomorrow to have another language that is not being released under Apache 2 license then there is nothing stopping them from using this feature as the patent is already theirs. Also, has anybody noticed that every single language in existence borrows features from some other language FOR FREE? If all languages started patenting their features then we soon will be completely boggled with lawsuits or unable to invent new, better languages as they will not be able to use already established convenient features. There are only this many simple convenient ways to denote programming language features. There is limited number of single character operators and ways you can organize them. Granting patents to single characters is just stupid.

smaddox 8y ago
Exactly! Apache 2 may protect users of Swift from suits for use of Swift itself, but it does not protect everyone else from suits for use of the concept elsewhere.
- maxdesiatov 8y ago
  Including from suits from Apple itself for using concepts of Swift elsewhere in projects that were developed from scratch, not forked from Apple's projects, right?
  - AsyncAwait 8y ago
    Yes, that is my understanding.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
agumonkey 8y ago
patenting syntax might fall in the same box as patenting number sequences
8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]