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IANAL, but by my reading, the patent grant is intended as additional protection for both Facebook and the consumers of React. Facebook is free to register paten

by nkohari 12y ago

IANAL, but by my reading, the patent grant is intended as additional protection for both Facebook and the consumers of React. Facebook is free to register patents that may overlap in some ways with code that they've open-sourced, and you are free to use their code without fear that you'll infringe upon a future patent. The 3-clause BSD license is retained in its original form [1] and makes no reference to the patent grant. Therefore, I believe you could fork the project and remove the patent grant in your fork. You would then lose the patent protection from Facebook, but they also could not revoke your rights to your fork of React. That said, if your use of React somehow violates one of Facebook's patents, you're in trouble. The original version of React would be protected by the additional patent grant, but your fork wouldn't be. I don't think Facebook is acting maliciously; I just think they're trying to provide a means to balance their (perceived) need to protect their patent portfolio vs. their desire to release OSS. If they start suing people that are using their open-source projects, it's going to undermine the (rather good) reputation the company has for releasing quality OSS. [1] https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/facebook/react/blob/master/LICENSE

comex 12y ago
It's also pretty similar to the Defensive Patent License. With that, to receive a free patent license, you have to join the 'community' by licensing all of your patents under the DPL to other community members. If you sue a member anyway, your license is terminated. The language in the DPL is more precise in limiting itself to actual lawsuits (rather than just "claims") and excluding counterclaims, but it's the same general idea. edit: corrected; DPL is not Twitter's license. Twitter's is the "Innovator's Patent Agreement", which is even more broad in its definition of "defensive" lawsuits: (a) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, threatened, or voluntarily participated in a patent infringement lawsuit against Assignee or any of Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors; (b) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, or voluntarily participated in a patent infringement lawsuit against another in the past ten years, so long as the Entity has not instituted the patent infringement lawsuit defensively in response to a patent litigation threat against the Entity; or (c) otherwise to deter a patent litigation threat against Assignee or Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors.
- nkohari 12y ago
  Thanks for this. I remembered that there was a company who had a license like this, but couldn't find it.
- emn13 12y ago
  This is actually a much less broad restriction because it stipulates "voluntarily participated". The react license terminates even if you're on the receiving end of a lawsuit - it's not defensive, it's potentially offensive.
emn13 12y ago
I doubt they're acting maliciously too, but it's not as rosy as you paint either. The patent grant is automatically lost if you argue "any right in any patent claim of Facebook is invalid or unenforceable". Notably, this applies to all patent suits, whether or not you're right, even if you're the person being sued, rather than you vice versa. In effect, Facebook can revoke the patent grant at will just by bringing an onerous patent lawsuit - you can either agree to their arbitrary terms (e.g. never to use React again and pay X billion), or you can argue their patent rights are invalid or unenforcable and lose the patent grant. That onerous suit might be over the very patents this grant licenses; it really doesn't matter. At best, this is a promise not to consider past patent infringement, since you'll receive warning that your license to React patents revoked. The fact that suing over usage of OSS would damage their reputation is irrelevant: even without a patent grant it would be perceived as extremely untrustworthy to sue over submarine patents. The patent grant doesn't really change that (it might make the commentary even more snarky should such an event occur, but that's about all). Also, realize that if this ever does occur, it's unlikely to be in a world that looks at Facebook like it does today. This is typically something you'd expect of a company in decline: they're not after good PR at that point, but after extracting maximal rents from others. And of course it wouldn't need to be Facebook itself that filed the lawsuits; they might sell off that intellectual property to some patent troll and claim (somewhat reasonably, I might add) that it's not really their responsibility what happens later on. Actual events have repeatedly shown that large firms have no qualms in making somewhat shady IP deals if that can give them a competitive advantage (e.g. the lawsuits surrounding android). In short: I don't think bad PR is a very effective disincentive for a patent lawsuit.

by nkohari 12y ago

comex 12y ago

It's also pretty similar to the Defensive Patent License. With that, to receive a free patent license, you have to join the 'community' by licensing all of your patents under the DPL to other community members. If you sue a member anyway, your license is terminated. The language in the DPL is more precise in limiting itself to actual lawsuits (rather than just "claims") and excluding counterclaims, but it's the same general idea. edit: corrected; DPL is not Twitter's license. Twitter's is the "Innovator's Patent Agreement", which is even more broad in its definition of "defensive" lawsuits: (a) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, threatened, or voluntarily participated in a patent infringement lawsuit against Assignee or any of Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors; (b) against an Entity that has filed, maintained, or voluntarily participated in a patent infringement lawsuit against another in the past ten years, so long as the Entity has not instituted the patent infringement lawsuit defensively in response to a patent litigation threat against the Entity; or (c) otherwise to deter a patent litigation threat against Assignee or Assignee’s users, affiliates, customers, suppliers, or distributors.

nkohari 12y ago
Thanks for this. I remembered that there was a company who had a license like this, but couldn't find it.
emn13 12y ago
This is actually a much less broad restriction because it stipulates "voluntarily participated". The react license terminates even if you're on the receiving end of a lawsuit - it's not defensive, it's potentially offensive.

emn13 12y ago

I doubt they're acting maliciously too, but it's not as rosy as you paint either. The patent grant is automatically lost if you argue "any right in any patent claim of Facebook is invalid or unenforceable". Notably, this applies to all patent suits, whether or not you're right, even if you're the person being sued, rather than you vice versa. In effect, Facebook can revoke the patent grant at will just by bringing an onerous patent lawsuit - you can either agree to their arbitrary terms (e.g. never to use React again and pay X billion), or you can argue their patent rights are invalid or unenforcable and lose the patent grant. That onerous suit might be over the very patents this grant licenses; it really doesn't matter. At best, this is a promise not to consider past patent infringement, since you'll receive warning that your license to React patents revoked. The fact that suing over usage of OSS would damage their reputation is irrelevant: even without a patent grant it would be perceived as extremely untrustworthy to sue over submarine patents. The patent grant doesn't really change that (it might make the commentary even more snarky should such an event occur, but that's about all). Also, realize that if this ever does occur, it's unlikely to be in a world that looks at Facebook like it does today. This is typically something you'd expect of a company in decline: they're not after good PR at that point, but after extracting maximal rents from others. And of course it wouldn't need to be Facebook itself that filed the lawsuits; they might sell off that intellectual property to some patent troll and claim (somewhat reasonably, I might add) that it's not really their responsibility what happens later on. Actual events have repeatedly shown that large firms have no qualms in making somewhat shady IP deals if that can give them a competitive advantage (e.g. the lawsuits surrounding android). In short: I don't think bad PR is a very effective disincentive for a patent lawsuit.