[tei-council] IPR inherent in TEI markup

[Lou Burnard]

Surely these issues are dealt with by our explicit use of the GPLv2?


On 15/07/11 12:05, Gabriel Bodard wrote:
> Not silly at all; sadly a very real concern in this day and age.
>
> A further question, which we may want to speak to a lawyer about before
> making any such addition to the license as James suggestions: Would such
> a disclaimer, that we do not claim IPR in a text based on it being
> marked up in TEI, leave the way open for *someone else* to make such a
> claim of IPR, would could later be used against someone using TEI tags?
> I know this sounds far-fetched, but again there are unscrupulous
> bastards out there, and I'd want to be very sure we're not giving too
> much away with such a disclaimer.
>
> G
>
> On 2011-07-15 11:40, James Cummings wrote:
>>
>> I recently had a discussion with one of our licensing and IPR
>> experts (who will be discussing digital copyright at our Summer
>> School) who had some questions about TEI licensing because of an
>> issue being looked at by our legal services.
>>
>> Far apart from the interesting discussion on whether adding TEI
>> markup to a text is considered significantly interpretative to
>> count as developing IPR, he had a question about whether use of
>> the TEI in specific had any vested rights adhering to the
>> Consortium.  i.e. if someone uses the TEI to mark something up
>> does the TEI Consortium have rights in the document based on the
>> fact that we have designed the structures that are in use.
>> Clearly given a) that we describe the TEI as a
>> recommendation/standard and b) that we license the Guideline as
>> GNU GPLv2 would indicate that we don't want to express any such
>> claim.
>>
>> Although I think the TEI-C claiming IPR in any TEI marked up text
>> is ludicrous, commercial companies have certainly attempt similar
>> claims in the past (viz MS). I'd propose that on our current page
>> about licensing we simply include a statement to the effect that:
>> "The TEI Consortium will not express any claim of IPR in a text
>> solely because it is marked up in TEI."  or similar.
>>
>> Silly I know,
>>
>> -James
>>
>