I followed up with the Cadence lawyer involved in this, and he
confirmed that our analysis was correct.
Cadence will continue to own the copyright on the Ambit Constraint
Language spec, but will licenses OVI and its members (i.e., the DC-WG
members) to use the spec in developing the DC-WG standard.
OVI will own the copyright for any modifications to the spec.
Since DC-WG will be using the Ambit Constraint Language spec
as a strawman to create an entirely new document, OVI will
completely own the copyright for the DC-WG standard.
Should there be any patents which cover the contents of the
Ambit Constraint Language spec, and those patents also cover
the contents of the DC-WG standard, Cadence will cross-license
the related patents with any company that wants to use the DC-WG
standard. To let the users of the DC-WG standard know what to do
if some issue with patents comes up, Cadence wants DC-WG to include
the sample patent licensing letter in the DC-WG standard.
The patent cross-licensing is completely independent from the
copyright license, so including this letter does not indicate any
need to get a copyright license from Cadence in order to use the
standard. But, as Steve Schulz pointed out, the patent issue remains,
regardless of whether DC-WG chooses to use the Ambit Constraint
Language as a strawman.
If Cadence or any other company has a patent related to the DC-WG
standard and chooses to enforce it, then companies that want to
use the DC-WG standard would have to license the patent from its
owner. Potentially, the patent owner could refuse to license a
particular company or charge excessive license fees. Cadence is
committing up front that, if necessary, it will cross-license any
related patents without a fee.
Hopefully this clarifies things.
Mark
-- Mark Hahn phone: (408) 428-5399 Architect, Deep Submicron Business Unit fax: (408) 428-5959 Cadence Design Systems email: mhahn@cadence.com