Re: Standing on multi-authored works

At 12:07 PM 4/18/2005, DV Henkel-Wallace wrote:

>On 18 Apr 2005, at 08:39, Marshall W. Van Alstyne wrote:
>
>>  A few posts ago, I promised to look into a legal question about 
>> permissions on multi-authored works.  Checking with an IP law scholar 
>> provided a pretty good clear answer.
>>  She replied:
>>Only one [needs to grant permission].  Either author can license the 
>>work.  If I write the lyrics and you write the music to a song, either of 
>>us can license the song, you can license the lyrics (even though I wrote 
>>all of them and you wrote none of them) and I can license the music.  We 
>>have a duty to account to each other for any proceeds.
>
>I have long thought a problem was standing.  That is to say: the FSF has 
>standing to sue in the case of case of license infringement WRT GNU 
>software (e.g. Bash, GCC, etc).  This is the most important reason for 
>assigning changes to the FSF.
>
>It's not clear who has standing in the case of infringement of the Linux 
>Kernel.  In some cases it's easy, but if it's a module, or a small 
>section, and the author of that section has gone AWOL, then the infringer 
>may get away scot-free.
>
>In the case of some GNU software I _know_ the original author is dead.
>That doesn't matter: their intentions, as well as their code, live on.

Interesting point, which sounds correct.  It suggests that a good property 
of F/OSS licensing, in any form, might be to grant (non-exclusive) standing 
to the original (c) holder or the institution, such as FSF, responsible for 
managing the software.

MVA