Social:Defensive termination
| Licensing of patents |
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| Overviews |
| Types |
| Strategies |
| Clauses in patent licenses |
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Higher category: Patents, Patent law |
Defensive termination is a form of implicit cross licensing of patent or other intellectual property rights. Consider a case where company A licenses patent A to company B. One of the conditions of the license agreement is that if company B should ever sue company A for infringing one of company B's own patents, such as patent B, then Company A can terminate the license to patent A. Thus company A would be able to counter sue company B for infringing patent A. This is a strong incentive to prevent company B from suing company A for any future patent it might receive after it has licensed patent A.[1]
The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, for example, has a defensive termination clause built into its "Eco-Patent Commons".[2] The Apache 2.0 License also includes a defensive termination clause.[3]
References
- ↑ "Lawrence Rosen, "Defining Open Standards", p 5.". http://www.rosenlaw.com/DefiningOpenStandards.pdf.
- ↑ "Eco-Patent Commons Overview". http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?type=p&MenuId=MTU1OQ&doOpen=1&ClickMenu=LeftMenu.
- ↑ "Apache 2.0 license". https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.txt.
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