As is usually the case with any information technology, the issues
related to intellectual property are quite important for open source
software. Among the four mechanisms that international legislation
provide for protecting intellectual propriety, only three (copyright,
patents and trademarks) could be suitable for software. The fourth one, trade
secret, is obviously not adequate for open source software, since it
requires obscurity (by not having access to source code, in the case
of software) or restraint on modifications or resell and
redistribution of derived works. None of these requirements are possible
with open source software.
In this section we will briefly discuss some of the
implications of
copyright and patent law when applied to open source software, and the
benefits and disadvantages that the open source movement can get from
both cases. Trademarks are usually dealt with in similar ways as any
other business does, and therefore will not be discussed in detail
here. However, they are the basis of many open source business, which
deal with the branding of services.
In subsection 3.2, we already discussed several issues relating to open source licences. It was implicit in that discussion that software is covered by copyright law. Unfortunately, in many countries (notably in the United States), copyright is no longer the only way to protect software. Nowadays, patent law is becoming more and more a way of protecting software techniques in some parts of the world.