On Thu, Dec 05, 2013 at 09:52:48AM -0600, Alice King wrote:
But... Maybe including the public domain requirement is too complex and it doesn't line up all that well with the patent issue risk. Maybe instead the "rule" would be that the Foundation Executive Director would have discretion to determine for government funded research institutions whether the burden to the contributing institution of clearing a patent license was disproportionate to the risk to the community of a accepting the contribution, and in those cases authorize the use of a modified Corporate CLA that included the sentence from the ECL limiting the patent license to things created by the same author.
This would require a case-by case analysis, but the JHUAPL situation indicates that a case-by-case analysis might be needed to make sure the "rule" was applied sensibly. There is no compelling reason to grant an exception to JHUAPL since they don't have the left hand/right hand problem that Batelle has.
Sure, maybe this is a better approach -- I feel less strongly about my slippery-slope concern today. :) I assume the Board would need to give Jonathan that discretion? - Richard