Law Commons^™

Enforcement Of Open Source Software Licenses: The Mdy Trio's Inconvenient Compliations, Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Articles

The Federal Circuit’s ruling in Jacobsen v. Katzer [535 F.3d 1373 (Fed. Cir. 2008)] finally settled the question of whether open source licenses are enforceable. Unfortunately, three recent cases from the Ninth Circuit have complicated matters. I call this trio of cases the “MDY Trio” in honor of the Ninth Circuit’s prior trio of licensing cases known as the “MAI Trio.”

On the surface, the MDY Trio provides a boost for the enforceability of software licenses, but the MDY Trio also creates two significant complications for open source licenses. First, the MDY Trio’s test for distinguishing between licenses and copyright …

Open Robotics, M. Ryan Calo

Articles

Robotics is poised to be the next transformative technology. Robots are widely used in manufacturing, warfare, and disaster response, and the market for personal robotics is exploding. Worldwide sales of home robots—such as iRobot’s popular robotic vacuum cleaner—are in the millions. In fact, Honda has predicted that by the year 2020, it will sell as many robots as it does cars. Microsoft founder Bill Gates believes that the robotics industry is in the same place today as the personal computer (“PC”) business was in the 1970s, a belief that is significant given that there are now well over one billion …