21 hours ago, JTippetts said:
Troubling, likely an enforcement nightmare, and I suspect not defensible in court though IANAL.
@JTippetts @esenthel So, from experience as I've talked something similar with my lawyer, who is my friend, in the past (and this counts for Czech Republic - which will be similar, but not necessarily the same, in other EU countries, yet it will differ a lot compared to USA). If your code is open source available, then:
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If somebody upgrades his engine based on the source he read in yours (which is at this point public knowledge), but by creating new source, even similar, you have no chance winning the process (i.e. he doesn't copy the actual source code, but he may copy your ideas - this is perfectly legal here).
Defendant would base defense on fact, that he learned from public knowledge to create new product from scratch. There is no way how to prevent this when your source code is public knowledge. A public knowledge is open source software according to Czech law, no matter what license you put on it.
Also, as Czech Patent Office does not allow patenting of software, algorithms, math methods, not even your know-how (and many many more can't be patented at all) - so even if you would fill patents in your country, by not blocking Czech Republic from accessing it - you added it into 'public knowledge' here (so physical people (people) or juristic people (companies) registered here can use it as source of knowledge.
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If somebody straight copies major parts of your source into their, then you may have high chance of winning the process (depending on judge and court, the result may differ though - so you're not having 100% chance of winning here). This is standard license infringement.
Either way you will get a note that if you don't want your code to become public knowledge, you shouldn't have moved it into public domain at all.