pubs

Rosenlaw & Einschlag

Technology Law Offices

Lawrence Rosen ● 3001 King Ranch Road, Ukiah, CA 95482 ● 707-485-1242

Michael B. Einschlag ● 25680 Fernhill Drive, Los Altos Hills, CA 94024 ● 650-949-2267

These are some publications by Lawrence Rosen. Click on a title for an online copy of that publication.

Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law, published by Prentice Hall in July 2004 and distributed by major bookstores and online distributors. A version of this book is also available online on this website.

Academic Free License (AFL) and Open Software License (OSL). These two open source licenses are approved by Open Source Initiative and are available for your use. A comparison of version 3.0 of these licenses to earlier versions is availablehere.

Bad Facts Make Good Law: The Jacobsen Case and Open Source. This article gives my perspective of the significance of Jacobsen v. Katzer, 535 F.3d 1373.

Defining Open Standards. This article was written for publication in The Standards Edge series, published by The Bolin Group. Portions of this article were included in a presentation to the “Standardization: Unified or Divider” conference in Vancouver, BC, December 5-7, 2005. Copies of the slides for that presentation, also licensed under OSL 3.0, are availablehere.

Open Letter to ANSI regarding current attempts to change established definition of Open Standards.

License Proliferation. An article written for OSDL about the proliferation of open source licenses.

Copyright Issues for the "Bits of History" Project. This article was written in 1999 for several libraries and museums in San Mateo County to explain the application of copyright law to the display of historical photographs on the Internet.

The Unreasonable Fear of Infection. An article written in 2001 for Open Magazine about the General Public License (GPL), to calm fears about the "infectivity" of that software license.

The following articles were written during 2001-2002 for Linux Journal magazine:

●	Do I need to put a copyright notice on my software?
●	Can a software license restrict my ability to use software?
●	I'd like to create open source version of a proprietary program. Can you do this without getting sued by the owner of the proprietary program?
●	Is there any advantage to registering my copyright in a program?
●	Which open source license should I use for my software?
●	Naming your open source software. This and the following article discuss trademarks.
●	Naming your open source software -- Part 2.
●	License FUD. This article explains why Microsoft's shared source licenses are dangerous.
●	Dealing with Patents in Software Licenses. An introduction to defensive suspension (patent retaliation).
●	Online Privacy. Discusses the "Platform for Privacy Policy" standard adopted by W3C.
●	The Role of Standards in Open Source.
●	Bad Law. This article describes why UCITA is not acceptable to the open source community.
●	License Defamation. Challenging some of Microsoft's false assertions about open source software licenses.
●	Fair Use. Why fair use isn't always fair.
●	Allocation of the Risk. A discussion of the warranty of provenance.
●	Why the Public Domain Isn’t a License.
●	Why We Oppose UCITA. What's wrong with the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act?
●	The Ethical System Administrator. What should a system administrator do when his or her employer copies software without a license?
●	Derivative Works. This is perhaps the most complicated and confusing topic in copyright law.
●	Manifestation of Assent. What does it take to form a contract?