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Re: ISO intellectual property (was Standards)

• From: John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
• To: David LeBlanc <whisper@o...>
• Date: Fri, 03 Aug 2001 15:31:11 -0400

David LeBlanc wrote:


> I don't think TLA's are trademarkable either, but
> since the W3C has bigger legal guns then I have or will ever hope to have..
> <sigh>.


Sure they are.  "IBM" is a registered trademark of IBM.


> You can quote from it under the "fair usage" doctrine, but wholesale
> importation of text is infringing.


True, unless the copyright license says otherwise.

> This is like a habbit i've heard of done
> by the GPL gang: Taking an open source,


If the document is Open Source, then making derivative works, even
trivial ones, is permitted by the license.

> adding some relatively small
> additions to the work and then publishing (making avalilable) under the GPL


Also legitimate.  If the making of a derivative work is permitted by the
license, then the maker can license the new work under *any* license
that is not inconsistent with the terms of the license on the original
work.

I can create a derivative of an MIT/BSD-licensed work and license it
under the GPL.  I cannot license a derivative of an MPL-licensed work
under the GPL, because the demands of the two licenses are incompatible.

That said, if the change is really small enough, it may not generate a
newly copyrightable work.  Generally the FSF counts changes of less
than 10 lines of a program as trivial.


> with the idea that they've defeated the original copyright holder's intent.


Only feebly.  The new version is GPL-licensed, but the original one is
still available under the original license.  The public has the same
rights as before: use the original version under the BSD license (or
whatever), or use the new "improved" version under the GPL license.


> This is clearly plagarism/theft of intellectual property.


Not.

-- 
There is / one art             || John Cowan <jcowan@r...>
no more / no less              || http://www.reutershealth.com
to do / all things             || http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
with art- / lessness           \\ -- Piet Hein

• References:
  • RE: ISO intellectual property (was Standards)
    • From: David LeBlanc <whisper@o...>

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