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dasher-project / dasher-web

Dasher text entry in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and SVG
https://dasher-project.github.io/dasher-web/browser/
MIT License
45 stars 8 forks source link

Licencing questions over the original Dasher #55

Closed willwade closed 3 years ago

willwade commented 3 years ago

Original Dasher was under GPL v3. We were concerned that a new Dasher had Licencing issues that may cause us problems. We need to investigate whether Cambridge university had any IP/Copyright.

@willwade asked the original team to investigate with Cambridge University whether this is a problem

willwade commented 3 years ago

-------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: Re: Dasher v6 project Date: Sun, 21 Mar 2021 12:38:55 +0000 From: Alan Blackwell To: Keith Vertanen CC: Alan Blackwell

Hi Keith,

As promised, I made enquiries with Cambridge Enterprise to ask whether David had ever registered or licensed any invention related to Dasher. As I had expected, there does not seem to be any licensing constraint on your use of intellectual property. (It’s always difficult to prove an absence, but they were able to locate other inventions registered by David, and have confirmed that these do not appear to be related to Dasher).

Best wishes, Alan

On 12 Mar 2021, at 15:45, Alan Blackwell wrote:

Hi Keith,

.."Apart from courtesy, I don’t believe it is formally necessary to get permission from Ramesh to use David’s IP. The publications and demonstrations are in the public domain, and I’m not aware that the basic mechanism was ever patented. David Ward should be able to confirm this more authoritatively, but it wouldn’t be a thing I would expect David to do, and I can’t recall him ever mentioning it in the early commercialisation discussions I participated in.

As you probably remember, Cambridge does not assert IP rights over inventions by University staff, meaning that any rights (patent or copyright) deriving from David's work would have passed to Ramesh rather than to the University, unless David explicitly made an assignment. Again, this is unlikely to be something he would do, but I can double-check for you whether there is any record of such a thing.

Your cleanroom strategy in order to avoid GPL obligations does sound very conservative. However, I don’t feel completely comfortable advising people to be less conservative. Per Ola is probably correct, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone would ever take you to court over this anyway, but the way you have proceeded so far is certainly pretty safe."

Alan