[Discuss] New OSHWA post up - Legal Notes

Thu Dec 19 22:00:09 UTC 2013

I'm up for it, and I think Mario will be interested too! If you wish, I can
think of people in Latin America that might be interested in a small event
to discuss these subjects, perhaps from Brazil, Argentina or Uruguay (we
have some connections with people that work on things related to design (as
a discipline) and intellectual property. Does anyone have any European
connections?

On 19 December 2013 14:08, gabriella levine <gabriella.levine at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hey
>  I'm wondering how we might start to discuss some of these international
> differences?
> I can see that there could be a potential google hangout meetup to
> brainstorm some of these legal differences regarding Intelectual Property
> & Copyrights, Patents, and Import/Export controls & regulations.
> Or we can start a more comprehensive forum or something. Or just keep
> discussing here, but I am curious some of the details around the
> differences about how each country handles these, but don't know where to
> go for resources,
>
> what are your guys' thoughts for starting/continuing this discussion?
> gabriella
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 12, 2013 at 9:03 AM, Mario Gómez <mxgxw.alpha at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I think that would be a great idea!
>>
>> I would say that OSHW is in a "legal limbo" in many countries including
>> ours. For example: here you cannot have copyright over design files for
>> devices. Things like schematics, mechanical drawings, PCB designs,
>> blueprints, etc. simply cannot be copyrighted. The only exception to the
>> rule are architectural designs because they are considered more like an
>> "artistic expression" of the author.
>>
>> Our law it's pretty clear on the topic that the only way to protect
>> specific implementations for devices are patents. Something like the
>> defensive patent license could make sense here but it means that you have
>> to do all the paperwork  (and pay the respective fees) to patent your
>> device to be able to license it (without considering the legal paper work
>> and costs associated to license your patent to a third party).
>>
>> The other problem is that patents cover only specific implementations,
>> this is completly incompatible with the always-changing nature of the open
>> source (software or hardware).
>>
>> I would say that there are a couple really important topics that need to
>> be considered when finding legal advice:
>>
>> -Intelectual Property & Copyrights
>> -Patents
>> -Import/Export controls & regulations
>>
>>
>> I'm not a lawyer but it's not hard to see that there are really
>> significative differences on how each country handles each of this topics,
>> it would be really interesting to expand this discussión to include lawyers
>> from other countries with the objetive to find simmilitudes/differences
>> between the different legal frameworks.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Mario.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 2:07 PM, Emilio Velis <contacto at emiliovelis.com>wrote:
>>
>>> After something like this, it would be nice to find converging lines
>>> among people in other regions.
>>>
>>> Do you have more contacts outside the United States? Althought some of
>>> us aren't lawyers, I think it would be nice to organize hangouts to discuss
>>> issues such as these and invite experts from different regions to find the
>>> possibility to replicate some of the efforts you're doing worldwide. Let us
>>> know if you're interested, I know for sure that Mario Gómez and I would be
>>> delighted to participate in something like this.
>>>
>>> Perhaps it won't happen in the near future, but it would be nice to keep
>>> that possibility open.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 6 December 2013 10:49, alicia <amgibb at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, definitely all the legal professionals in the room were American.
>>>> I will add this at the bottom in the disclaimers.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Alicia
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 7:19 AM, FREE SMALL WIND TURBINE PROJECT PEOPLE
>>>> <smallwindturbineproj.contactor at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Thank you Alicia.
>>>>> It a huge job. Bravo !
>>>>>
>>>>> However, may we suggest you to modify "just a little" some parts of
>>>>> your blog post, concerning the "copyright and patent" section ?
>>>>> The analysis seems delivered across US (or US-like) copyright and
>>>>> patent concept. Maybe you should insist the copyright and patent analysis
>>>>> might not match with some world regions. Then, insisting on this, might
>>>>> avoid wrong reasoning for places where the US (or US-like) copyright
>>>>> concept is not (fortunately yet) completely valid.
>>>>> To better understand why, by a based-on-written-law country example,
>>>>> you will maybe interested in reading the following links - remember, there
>>>>> are also a lot of other regions where the law is oral and ownership is only
>>>>> valid across oral (or also "signs without any world at all") decisions :
>>>>>
>>>>> http://artlibre.org/licence/faq#FAQ_52
>>>>> and also:
>>>>> http://artlibre.org/licence/faq#FAQ_46
>>>>> http://artlibre.org/licence/faq#FAQ_48
>>>>> http://artlibre.org/licence/faq#FAQ_49
>>>>>
>>>>> Again, copyright term internationalization comes from a US industrial
>>>>> export spreading - by negotiation state by state region by region - and
>>>>> might (already have) generate(d) a US supremacy above copyleft practices
>>>>> and local culrure - where ownership is part of long ancestral culture
>>>>> evolution - whatever this supremacy is bad or good - the notion of bad or
>>>>> good is not the purpose here, but we might consider that people should be
>>>>> aware about this, if relevant - if so, we might think of it, might we ?
>>>>>
>>>>> Freely
>>>>> Antoine
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 2013/12/6 alicia <amgibb at gmail.com>
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hey all,
>>>>>> We wrote up the notes from the Legal Day in NYC as a blog post. We
>>>>>> hope you find it useful:
>>>>>> http://www.oshwa.org/2013/12/05/open-hardware-legal-meetup-nyu-nov-11/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> We hope to have more of these in the future with larger rooms to
>>>>>> accommodate more participants!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>> Alicia
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>>>
>>>>>
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