Green Patent License

Revision as of 09:58, 24 November 2003 by 142.177.82.78 (talk)

A Green Patent License is a parallel to a Green Documentation License and Green Software License. It was originally proposed as a way for Greens to hold patents on technologies they don't like, to suppress them, e.g. land mines, nuclear technology, or genetically modified food.

This might be an aspect of the Consumerium License if there is a way to require improvements that might be subject to patent into a friendly license so they can't be used to suppress the Consumerium Services.

In this case the Green Parties, Governance Organization or nonprofit Consortium holding the patents would agree to make them, and possibly other patents, available for use for the Green purposes of the healthy signal infrastructure, of which at least the healthy buying infrastructure must be royalty-free or self-funding, i.e. Consumerium does not pay for access to things it itself created or channeled from a Consumerium Contributor.

Alternatively all patentable aspects of extensions could be revealed to the public domain (improvements on which would then be subject to independent patent - self-interested fork) or open patents could be used. However the latter is not self-funding and seems not to really be going anywhere.

Or, like free software, we could just require in the Consumerium License that no one patent anything improved on that they got from Consumerium, unless it is an open patent including the Green license. This would be hard to enforce and would do nothing to assist self-funding. It would also possibly be unenforceable, and would not provide any incentive for extensions, whereas participating in a larger scheme Greens run may do both.

There are few ideal solutions in the patent world.