Patentleft

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Patentleft is the practice of using patent licensing to remove restrictions on using royalty-incurring patents in various fields, especially software development. Patentleft patents are licensed to anyone, on the condition that licensees only use them in works that permit royalty-free redistribution of those product's patents under the same terms of the original patentleft patent.

[edit] 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.