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Re: [eclipse.org-members-committers] Upcoming Vote of the Membership
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On 04/08/2015 12:02 PM, Neil Bartlett wrote:
I don’t see an actual proposal here to be voted upon.
This email thread is just the heads up that a vote is coming. The actual
vote, with credentials, etc. will be starting next week. The text of the
ballot will be largely based on the Board-approved resolution included
in the FAQ portion of my original email.
You say that the agreement can be modified to allow prospective
government members to choose a jurisdiction for dispute resolution,
but haven’t specified which jurisdictions may be on the table.
You may be an email or two behind. The concrete example on the table is
United States federal law.
If a prospective member proposes a certain jurisdiction, who will
decide whether it is acceptable or not?
As per the Board resolution, the decision will be made by the Executive
Director, after review by and advice from our attorneys. A report of all
such exceptions will be provided to the Board. As I mentioned previously
the key principle will be that all our members, including any such new
members, will be bound by the same terms and conditions as everyone else.
It seems relatively innocuous for a US agency to choose US federal
law. But would an agency of, say, the Chinese government be able to
choose a Chinese court for settling disputes? I’m no lawyer, and
certainly not a specialist in international intellectual property
issues, but couldn’t such a scenario significantly weaken the patent
and copyright protections afforded to existing members?
An excellent point. We would most likely reject such an application for
exactly those reasons. Just the costs of doing a proper legal review
under Chinese law would make such an application untenable. However, I
would point out that the vast majority of copyright and patent
protection within the Eclipse ecosystem stems from the EPL, not from the
terms of the membership agreement. The terms of the membership agreement
itself are actually pretty simple, and explicitly defers intellectual
property licensing matters to the EPL.
Hope that helps.
--
Mike Milinkovich
mike.milinkovich@xxxxxxxxxxx
+1.613.220.3223 (mobile)
