On Wed, 2003-08-13 at 11:31, Voltage Spike wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 04:34:41AM -0700, Craig White wrote:
> 
> > it would be standard practice for them to include language that would
> > specifically prohibit them from doing that in the license.
> 
> Although a license may state that you cannot sue the company later, I
> am under the impression that such statements simply make lawsuits more
> difficult.  It probably wouldn't completely protect SCO from future
> litigation initiated by licensees.
> 
> I am more inclined to believe that SCO is not truly licensing people.
> If I were in their place, I would word the "license" along the lines
> of: "You may utilize any and all intellectual property owned by the
> SCO (with the exception of blah, blah, and blah) without fear of
> future litigation or fees relating to such properties."  In this
> manner, even if the claims of SCO are struck down, the company can
> still (rightly) claim that it completely fulfilled the terms of the
> contract.  In fact, SCO does not have to own anything since they
> simply promised not to sue.
> 
> Of course, such wording sounds even more like extortion...
-----
intellectual property licensing is pretty much extortion - why would
someone pay to license technology unless they were in fear of an
injunction against sales/delivery of product brought about by the patent
holder

I shortcut my response because this is getting somewhat afield of what
PLUG is about but I know that intellectual property licenses/technology
licenses are exceedingly technical - naturally, they are written by
patent lawyers and they would undoubtedly preclude any licensee from
obtaining a refund from the licensor even if the patents were held to be
invalid for whatever reason. Door shut...once you pay the fee, it's gone
and you would certainly have signed away your rights to litigate for the
recovery of the money should the patent not hold up. If your licensing
agreement had progressive payments and then the patents didn't hold up,
you could possibly make an argument for not making any further payments
but the contract between the parties would be binding upon the parties,
regardless of the status of the patent rights.

Craig