Patentleft

Licensing of patents
Overviews
Licensing  · Royalties
Types
Compulsory licensing · Cross-licensing Defensive Patent License Defensive termination Fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory (FRAND) Reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) Shop right
Strategies
Catch and release Defensive patent aggregation Patentleft  · Patent pool  · Stick licensing
Clauses in patent licenses
Field-of-use limitation
v · d · e

Patentleft (also patent left, copyleft-style patent license) is the practice of licensing patents (especially biological patents) for royalty-free use, on the condition that adopters license related improvements they develop under the same terms. Copyleft-style licensors seek "continuous growth of a universally accessible technology commons" from which they, and others, will benefit.^[1]

Patentleft is analogous to copyleft, a license which allows distribution of a copyrighted work and derived works, but only under the same terms.

Uses of patentleft

The Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS) project implemented a patentleft system to encourage re-contribution and collaborative innovation of their technology. BIOS holds a patented technology for transferring genes in plants, and licenses the technology under the terms that, if a license holder improves the gene transfer tool and patents the improvement, then their improvement must be made available to all the other license holders. ^[2]

Example

Person A has a patent, and licenses it under the a patentleft license.

Person B has two patents in her product and wants to use Person A's patents in that product. Person B also wants to charge royalties for her two patents. She decides to use Person A's patent, but now must license her patents, royalty-free, under the same terms as Person A's patent.

Person C has three patents in his product and wants to use Person B's two patents in that product, but doesn't want to use Person A's patent. Person C also wants to charge royalties for his three patents. He decides to use Person B's patent, but now must license his patents, royalty-free, under the same terms as Person A's patent.

See also

• Defensive Patent License
• Defensive patent aggregation
• Patent troll
• Copyleft
• Software patent
• Public domain
• Viral license

References

1. ^ Hope, Janet (2008). Biobazaar: The Open Source Revolution and Biotechnology. Harvard University Press. pp. 176–187. doi:10.1007/b62130. ISBN 978-0674026353. http://books.google.com/books?id=IPTwYNqpJWgC. 
2. ^ John T. Wilbanks and Thomas J. Wilbanks, "Science, Open Communication and Sustainable Development", 13 April 2010, "[1]"

Further reading

• Ménage, Guillaume; Dietrich, Yann (March 2010). "'Patent Left'". Les Nouvelles (Licensing Executives Society International): 42–46. http://www.lesi.org/images/60d5b196-0941-407d-a3d0-8c79d678c6bf.pdf. Retrieved 2010-11-30. 
• Richard Stallman criticizes patentleft because of cost of applying for patents

External links

• http://www.openpatents.org/