Book description
"Clear, correct, and deep, this is a welcome addition to discussions of law and computing for anyone -- even lawyers!"-- Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society
If you work in information technology, intellectual property is central to your job -- but dealing with the complexities of the legal system can be mind-boggling. This book is for anyone who wants to understand how the legal system deals with intellectual property rights for code and other content. You'll get a clear look at intellectual property issues from a developer's point of view, including practical advice about situations you're likely to encounter.
Written by an intellectual property attorney who is also a programmer, Intellectual Property and Open Source helps you understand patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and licenses, with special focus on the issues surrounding open source development and the GPL. This book answers questions such as:
- How do open source and intellectual property work together?
- What are the most important intellectual property-related issues when starting a business or open source project?
- How should you handle copyright, licensing and other issues when accepting a patch from another developer?
- How can you pursue your own ideas while working for someone else?
- What parts of a patent should be reviewed to see if it applies to your work?
- When is your idea a trade secret?
- How can you reverse engineer a product without getting into trouble?
- What should you think about when choosing an open source license for your project?
Most legal sources are too scattered, too arcane, and too hard to read. Intellectual Property and Open Source is a friendly, easy-to-follow overview of the law that programmers, system administrators, graphic designers, and many others will find essential.
Publisher resources
Table of contents
- Preface
-
1. The Economic and Legal Foundations of Intellectual Property
- Law and Code
- The Types of Intellectual Property
- Intellectual Property and Market Failure
- Evaluating the System
-
2. The Patent Document
- The Construction of a Patent
- The Face of the Patent
- Conception of the Invention
- The Body of the Patent
- The Claims
- Other Resources
- 3. The Patent System
-
4. Copyright
- Copyright in Context
- The Terms of Copyright
- The Copyright Term
- Owning a Copyright
- The Rights Granted by Copyright
- 5. Trademarks
-
6. Trade Secrets
- Trade Secrets Defined
- The Flaming Moe: The Life and Death of a Trade Secret
- Trade Secrets and Software Development
- Trade Secrets, Businesses, and Consultants
- 7. Contracts and Licenses
-
8. The Economic and Legal Foundations of Open Source Software
- A Brief Digression into Terminology
- Understanding Open Source
-
Credit Unions and Open Source: An Analogy
- Ownership
- Involvement
- Profits, Rates, and Fees
- The Customer Relationship
-
Market Profile
- Market profiles for banks and credit unions
- The difference—ownership
- Market profiles and software development
- The market for open source software
- Firefox: A case study in commodity open source software
- Linux: A case study in specialty-oriented open source software
- Moving software from a specialty to a commodity product
- Ownership, again
- The Role of Open Source Licenses
- The Open Source Definition
- Different Types of Open Source Licenses
- 9. So I Have an Idea...
- 10. Choosing a License
- 11. Accepting Patches and Contributions
- 12. Working with the GPL
-
13. Reverse Engineering
- Storming the Castle
- A Sample Reverse Engineering Procedure
- The Digital Millennium Copyright Act
- 14. Incorporating As a Non-Profit
- A. Sample Proprietary Information Agreement (PIA)
- B. Open Source License List
- C. Free Software License List
- D. Fedora License List and GPL Compatibility
- E. Public Domain Declaration
- F. The Simplified BSD License
- G. The Apache License, Version 2.0
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H. The Mozilla Public License, Version 1.1
- 1. Definitions
- 2. Source Code License
- 3. Distribution Obligations
- 4. Inability to Comply Due to Statute or Regulation
- 5. Application of this License
- 6. Versions of the License
- 7. DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY
- 8. Termination
- 9. LIMITATION OF LIABILITY
- 10. U.S. Government End Users
- 11. MISCELLANEOUS
- 12. Responsibility for Claims
- 13. Multiple-Licensed Code
- Applying the Mozilla Public License
- I. The GNU Lesser General Public License, Version 2.1
- J. The GNU Lesser General Public License, Version 3
- K. The GNU General Public License, Version 2, June 1991
- L. The GNU General Public License, Version 3, June 2007
- M. The Open Software License, Version 3.0
- Index
- Colophon
- Copyright
Product information
- Title: Intellectual Property and Open Source
- Author(s):
- Release date: July 2008
- Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
- ISBN: 9780596517960
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