http://joshkagan.com/2008/08/13/win-for-open-source-in-jacobsen-v-katzer/ Counsel for Technology, Entertainment, and Business Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:57:42 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://joshkagan.com/2008/08/13/win-for-open-source-in-jacobsen-v-katzer/comment-page-1/#comment-1009 Battling Licenses | The Josh Kagan Blog Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:12:19 +0000 http://joshkagan.com/blog/?p=35#comment-1009 [...] Copyleft licenses all have one big thing in common: they remove particular common copyright law restrictions on copies of works. For most works protected by U.S. copyrights, the owner of a copyright uses the law to prohibit others from reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of his work. But copyleft licenses work to grant some or all of those rights to every person who receives a copy of the work. It’s wrong to think of this as the copyright owner surrendering one or more of his exclusive rights. The copyright owner is simply offering a license to use the work in one of a certain number of ways. Subsequent uses of the work are then “licensed uses” so long as they comply with the terms of the license selected by the copyright owner. But if someone uses the work without complying with the license, then his use is an infringing one.1 [...] [...] Copyleft licenses all have one big thing in common: they remove particular common copyright law restrictions on copies of works. For most works protected by U.S. copyrights, the owner of a copyright uses the law to prohibit others from reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of his work. But copyleft licenses work to grant some or all of those rights to every person who receives a copy of the work. It’s wrong to think of this as the copyright owner surrendering one or more of his exclusive rights. The copyright owner is simply offering a license to use the work in one of a certain number of ways. Subsequent uses of the work are then “licensed uses” so long as they comply with the terms of the license selected by the copyright owner. But if someone uses the work without complying with the license, then his use is an infringing one.1 [...]

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