Defensive termination

Defensive termination is a form of implicit cross licensing of patent or other intellectual property rights. Consider a case where company A licenses patent A to company B. One of the conditions of the license agreement is that if company B should ever sue company A for infringing one of company B's own patents, such as patent B, then Company A can terminate the license to patent A. Thus company A would be able to counter sue company B for infringing patent A. This is a strong incentive to prevent company B from suing company A for any future patent it might receive after it has licensed patent A.^[1]

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development, for example, has a defensive termination clause built into its "Eco-Patent Commons".^[2] The Apache 2.0 License also includes a defensive termination clause.^[3]

References

^ "Lawrence Rosen, "Defining Open Standards", p 5" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-13. Retrieved 2008-03-21.
^ "Eco-Patent Commons Overview". Archived from the original on 2008-03-19. Retrieved 2008-03-21.
^ "Apache 2.0 license". Apache.org.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

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[1] "Lawrence Rosen, "Defining Open Standards", p 5" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-05-13. Retrieved 2008-03-21.

[2] "Eco-Patent Commons Overview". Archived from the original on 2008-03-19. Retrieved 2008-03-21.

[3] "Apache 2.0 license". Apache.org.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)

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